Fox News stays hot in total day coming off of July monthly ratings win

CNN rode its coverage of the Democratic Presidential Debates to a first place finish on the cable  primetime ratings chart during the first week of August, according to Nielsen.

CNN averaged 3.2 million viewers during the week of July 29 to Aug. 4 to top all cable networks, said Nielsen. The network was led by its two-night coverage of the Democratic Presidential Debates, with its July 30 and July 31 live telecasts averaging nearly 19 million viewers combined, said Nielsen.

Fox News, fresh off its sweep of the July monthly cable primetime and total day ratings, finished second for the week with 2.5 million viewers, with MSNBC finishing in a third-place tie with Discovery Channel and HGTV with 1.2 million viewers.

Rounding out the top 10 most watched networks in primetime last week were TBS, A&E Network and TLC (all tied with 1 million viewers), Hallmark Channel (980,000) and USA Network (979,000).

Fox News topped cable's weekly total day ratings chart for the 30th consecutive week, averaging 1.4 million viewers in besting CNN, MSNBC, Nickelodeon, HGTV and Investigation Discovery, according to Nielsen.