This was an interesting Sunday in Cable News Twitter: HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” had the most mentions during its hour, while Fox News Sunday had the most mentions overall. Following LWT were the 11am Melissa Harris-Perry Show, the 9am Up w/Steve Kornacki, Fox News Sunday, and the 10 am Melissa Harris-Perry Show:
I suppose you could say that John Oliver’s show is not news, and therefore the MHP show should claim first place. But that ignores the fact that Oliver does discuss the news and, for a half-hour show, managed to bring in more mentions overall than MHP, a two hour show.
If you look back, year over year, you see that MHP’s mentions have fallen somewhere around 50%; if her mentions were as strong as a year ago they would have been enough, on a good day, to beat Oliver.
Raw data: 2015-02-15-ShowStats.csv