Numbers Game

Thursday was a busy day for me. I spent three hours on the radio guest-hosting America's Number One radio broadcast. You can find a few moments from the show (including a heartwarming missing-cat story) here. Later, I was back on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" with Brian Kilmeade for a couple of segments. On Friday, I'll return to the Golden EIB Microphone for another stint, starting at 12 noon Eastern/9am Pacific.

Meanwhile, I rise on a point of privilege, as the parliamentarians say, to draw attention to some boffo numbers hot off the press:

Congrats @MarkSteynOnline!
Mark filled in for @TuckerCarlson & topped cable news in total viewers & the 25-54 demo on Tuesday

That's right, I did: We were the Number One cable news show on Boxing Day, both in the allegedly vital "demo" and in total viewers. Ninetysomething per cent of that is due to Tucker and his terrific production team and the show they've built. But the trick for a guest-host is not to blow that. So this is a good time of year to check the comparative measure of those of us who are Nature's fill-ins. And I'm pleased to say we crushed the competition on MSNBC, a million ahead of Hayes and O'Donnell, half-a-mil ahead of Maddow.

On Wednesday night it was a narrower victory, but we were still the Number One cable show except for college football, and the Number One news show in total viewers, beating the MSNBC guys by 600,000. And it was almost like the old days at Fox in that our ratings at "Tucker" matched the numbers for MSNBC, CNN and Headline News combined. As I said, all but a sliver of that is due to Tucker and his tremendous brand, but the sliver's the difference between winning the night and not. So I thank all of you who swung by.

I know the above is all a bit inside-baseball, but all the telly professionals pay huge attention to it - and occasionally I do, too. In the age of "social media", one mostly hears from people who loathe one, of whom, in my case, there appear to be untold legions. I confess I'm a wee bit riddled with self-doubt these days, and I sometimes wonder about continuing with TV (and radio, and stage work). So it's nice to know there are a few folks on the other end of the seesaw. If you were one of them, I'm grateful for two great nights at the end of a pretty rough year.