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2015 Q2 Ratings Report: ABC, Fox News on top; MSNBC struggles as CNN makes gains

ABC's "World News" won the broadcast news ratings race for the second quarter of 2015, while Fox News topped in cable and, more notably, was the third most-watched cable channel period in primetime, our review of the Q2 Nielsen ratings shows.

ABC's nightly news broadcast drew an average of 7.853 million total veiwers and 1.902 million viewers in the demo. NBC's "Nightly News’” was a close second with 7.81 million total viewers and 1.829 million in the demo. In Lester Holt's first week as the formal& Friends” had 942,000 total viewers for the quarter and 210,000 viewers in the demo, while “Morning Joe” had 362,000 total viewers and just 79,000 viewers in the demo. “New Day” had 329,000 total viewers for the quarter and 110,000 demo viewers.

Fox won the total day viewership with 980,000 viewers, followed by CNN with 433,000 and MSNBC with 321,000 -- though CNN also saw a 26 percent increase in total day viewers, also the largest jump for any of the cable nets.

Meanwhile, MSNBC continues to struggle with its ratings, as viewership declined 17 percent in the total day demo. MSNBC currently sits in fourth-place in the demo for total day with just 86,000 viewers, behind CNN sister network HLN.

Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.