HLN's new 9 p.m. talk show with Joy Behar debuted Sept. 29 with 559,000 total viewers. That's an 8% increase over the network's 9 p.m. average for the month and 3% over the same month last year. In news' target sales demographic of 25-54 year olds, Behar's show pulled in 215,000 viewers increasing the time slot average for the month 14% and 9% year-to-year.
Behar replaced a rebroadcast of Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell. She inherits the time slot previously occupied by Glenn Beck, who left the network last year for Fox News Channel, where his 5 p.m. show has built a large and devoted following.
Behar, a co-host of the ABC daytime talker The View, is coming into a tough cable news time slot. Fox News' Sean Hannity dominates the 9 p.m. hour while Larry King Live, on sister network CNN, is in a neck-and-neck battle with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show.
For the just concluded third quarter ratings period, Hannity averaged 2.6 million viewers with 713,000 in the demo followed by Larry King Live (1.2 million viewers, 350,000 in the demo) and Rachel Maddow (992,000 viewers, 298,000 in the demo).
