NewsNation swapping ‘Prime’ newscast and Dan Abram’s show timeslots

By MixDex Article may include affiliate links

NewsNation is shuffling its schedule once again, moving Dan Abrams‘ show into the coveted 9 p.m. eastern timeslot instead of its primetime newscast, which is moving up an hour.

Starting Feb. 28, 2022, “NewsNation Prime with Marni Hughes” will start airing at 8 p.m. eastern, with “Dan Abrams Live” moving to 9 p.m.

9 p.m. is one of the most competitive and lucrative hours in cable news.

Abrams was previously both an anchor and general manager at MSNBC and is also ABC News’ chief legal analyst.

“Dan Abrams Live” has performed comparatively well for NewsNation, bringing in around 40,000 viewers on average. That pales in comparison, however, to Fox’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” with around 3 million viewers.

“Abrams” tends to outperform two other personality driven shows on the network, “On Balance with Leland Vittert” at 7 p.m. and “Banfield” at 10 p.m., which tend to hover in the high 20,000 range.

Ratings show that “NewsNation Rush Hour” tends to be one of the highest performing shows with around 136,000 viewers at 5 p.m., though the “Blue Bloods” repeat airing immediately before tends to garner around 300,000 viewers, so “Rush Hour” loses over half of the network’s audience.

Outside of that, “The Donlon Report” often comes in second in the mid-40,000 range in its 6 p.m. timeslot.

The network’s “Morning in America,” its newest offering, delivers around 13,000 viewers, compared to 45,000 or so people who watch the decades old “Murder She Wrote” rerun that serves as its lead in.

Switching its more straightforward news broadcast “Prime” with the more personality drive “Abrams” does mean that the latter will now go up against the top rated “Hannity” on Fox, whose numbers tend to be a lower than “Tucker,” though not by much and Sean Hannity is still definitely a formidable rival.

NewsNation was launched and continues to bill itself as a bias free news source and originally offered a three hour primetime newscast featuring Hughes and Donlon along with Rob Nelson, who left the network.

However, the ratings were dismal and a shakeup resulted in the network giving Donlon his own show and bringing on former CNN and MSNBC anchor Ashleigh Banfield to host an interview centric show at 10 p.m. “On Balance” and “Abrams” were added later in another series of changes and have been seen by many as a continued erosion of the network’s dedication to straightforward newscasts and more in the direction of analysis and panel style debate shows that have taken over cable.

NewsNation, which is owned by Nexstar, was originally billed as a way for the company to dip into its hundreds of local newsrooms around the country for content in the form of news stories and footage. However, that concept was overshadowed with more talk, analysis and debate programming taking up the schedule.