'Anderson Cooper 360' Fourth in Ratings During First Week in New Time Slot

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For its first week in its new -- and more competitive -- 8 p.m. time slot, Anderson Cooper 360 finished fourth among the cable news competition, averaging 162,000 viewers in news' target demographic of 25-54 year olds with 502,000 total viewers.

That’s down 4 percent in the demo and 7 percent among total viewers compared to CNN’s second quarter average at 8 p.m., when the killing of Osama bin Laden and the Royal Wedding spiked cable news tune in.

Cooper anchored last Monday through Wednesday from Africa and was back in the studio on Thursday. Versus the year-ago time slot average, AC360 posted increased of 31 percent in the demo and 12 percent in total viewers.

Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor led at 8 p.m. last week averaging 683,000 viewers in the demo with 3.0 million total viewers, followed by MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell (204,000 in the demo; 865,000 total viewers), and HLN’s Nancy Grace (171,000 in the demo; 762,000 total viewers).

Current’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann averaged 72,000 in the demo and 181,000 among total viewers, marking declines of 15 and 13 percent, respectively, week-to-week. The show started the week relatively strong pulling in more than 100,000 viewers in the demo last Monday and Tuesday. But David Shuster filled in for Olbermann Wednesday through Friday and into this week.