VillageVoice.com
Sure, she's insulted kidnapping victims, joked (presumably) about firing staffers on-air, harassed distraught mothers and even been sued for allegedly contributing to guest Melinda Duckett's suicide. But it was all for the sake of justice! (Though, of course, those ratings and PR boosts didn't hurt). The Chicago Tribune reports that Nancy Grace and her network, Headline News, have seen a substantial rise in ratings, due in large part to Grace's increasing popularity (or, at least, her viewership anyway). In the past two years, Grace has honed her fire and brimstone diatribes and guilty-until-proven-innocent antics into a full blown high-profile bonanza, with the ratings pouring in as a result. Her network has subsequently blossomed into a significant money maker for CNN, bringing in $150 million in revenue, still a snippet compared to the larger network's $800 million total but noteworthy given MSNBC's $250 million profits.
The CNN spinoff, launched in 1982, has long held the role of redheaded stepchild to its parent station (albeit a remarkably stable one; current anchor Chuck Roberts has been anchoring since the very first broadcast). While currently averaging 337,000 viewers in prime time, a 59% increase from the 212,000 it averaged before undergoing a format overhaul in 2005, HLN's evening programming block of Grace, Glenn Beck and a Grace repeat regularly beats MSNBC's prime time lineup, with Grace's time slot attracting around 500,000 viewers. Sure, actual news has never been her forte - or her network's, for that matter. The Tribune reports that, while CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC perched with bated breath to cover Saddam Hussein's execution last Friday night, Grace viewers were treated to a pretaped, hour-long retrospective on the 2002 murder of Laci Peterson. MSNBC averaged 581,000 viewers that evening with HLN following at 310,000, a surprisingly high (and arguably disturbing) number given its virtual ignoring of the Iraqi dictator's death save a mention across the bottom-screen ticker. One would think that Grace more than anyone would relish a good hanging.
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