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Fox News Channel's dominant ratings for coverage of last week's Republican convention were either a sharp rebuke of rival networks' left-leaning bias or proof that the Bush administration in effect has its own in-house ally.

There seems to be little middle ground in this argument but one overwhelming fact: For the first time ever, a cable news network outdrew the long-established news operations at ABC, CBS and NBC. And it wasn't close. Fox's victory margins grew throughout the week, with the network peaking at 7.3 million viewers for President Bush's acceptance speech Thursday night. Runner-up NBC had 5.9 million viewers while Fox's principal cable news rival, CNN, had an audience of just 2.6 million.

At the Democratic convention, CNN drew 4 million viewers for John Kerry's acceptance speech while Fox had 2.6 million. Both trailed all three broadcast networks.

Who's Watched

Here are the average audiences, in millions, for Republican convention coverage on the three nights when the cable news channels and broadcast networks competed head to head in the last hour of prime time. (Note: Nielsen Media Research did not provide data for PBS and C-SPAN.)
•Fox News Channel, 6.1
•NBC, 5.2
•ABC, 4.2
•CBS, 4.0
•CNN, 1.8
•MSNBC, 1.5

Here are the average cable news channel audiences, in millions, for all four nights of prime-time convention coverage (7 to 10 p.m.).
•Fox News Channel, 4.4
•CNN, 1.4
•MSNBC, 1.1

SOURCE: Nielsen Media Research

Overall, CNN's prime-time coverage edged Fox's during the Democratic convention before losing in a landslide when the Republicans took center stage.

"That suggests there are more people than I thought who are really looking for someone whose political vibrations are sympathetic to their own," Nightline anchor Ted Koppel said.

"There's nothing essentially wrong with that unless of course it leads to a future where everybody in the media universe feels they have to carve out a position, either with the left, the right, or vegetarians. Logically you could wind up where there's no longer a news organization that even tries to go down the middle. I think that would be a terrible shame."

Bill O'Reilly, host of Fox's most popular program, The O'Reilly Factor , said his network's popularity has little to do with ideology.

"I don't think any network is liberal or conservative. We do news in a more interesting way. That's the key. We're more flamboyant. Certainly Fox takes a more traditional approach, and voices and opinions heard here will never be heard on the Jennings, Rather or Brokaw shows. But that's not it! We're more fun to watch and our information is solid. Period!"

In the end, the four nights of the Republican convention averaged 22.6 million viewers on six networks, compared with the Democrats' 20.4 million. That's a shift from the 2000 conventions, when the Democrats had 20.6 million viewers and the Republicans 19.2 million.

The most-watched Summer Olympics telecast, on the night of Aug. 19, had 31.7 million viewers on NBC alone.

	Politics: National

Politics: National