HLN Tops CNN, Nancy Grace Beats Keith Olbermann In April Demo

HLN is one Hot Little Network.

In the month of April, HLN topped big sister network CNN in the primetime Adults 25-54 demo for the first time ever. HLN averaged 274,000 A25-54 viewers compared to CNN's 265,000. Fox News came in first with 662,000 and MSNBC placed second with 298,000 in the demo.

As a network, HLN — which rebranded from Headline News in January and adopted the tagline "News + VIews" — is growing in every hour of the day, posting 60% growth in the prime demo and 46% growth in total day demo.

At 8PM, "Nancy Grace" beat Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" in the demo, averaging 411,000 viewers to Olbermann's 384,000 (she also beat him at 10PM, when both of their programs repeat). Grace is up 103% in the demo compared to April 2008, the biggest increase in the demo of all primetime cable news programs.

In addition, "Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell" beat MSNBC's 7PM edition of "Hardball" in just its sixth month on the air.

And in one of the more surprising stats, "Morning Express with Robin Meade" placed second only to "Fox & Friends" in the demo — averaging 173,000 viewers and besting both MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and CNN's "American Morning."