New Highs for HLN as Casey Anthony Defense Rests

Casey Anthony‘s lawyers called their final witnesses to the stand today. And the mother accused of murdering her toddler daughter, wasn’t one of them. While all the cable news networks have begun carrying live testimony this week from the courthouse in Orlando, HLN’s decision to broadcast gavel-to-gavel coverage continues to set ratings milestones for the network.

According to Nielsen ratings for Wednesday:

• HLN ranked #1 in both total day (357K) and primetime (544K) in cable news in the A25-54 demo.

• This was HLN’s largest A25-54 & Total Viewer delivery since HLN moved to long-form programming in February 2005.

• HLN was #1 in every hour from 9am-9pm in A25-54 viewers.

• HLN Special Report at 5pmET was the #1 cable news telecast in Total Viewers and A25-54 viewers on all of cable.

• Nancy Grace at 8pmET was the 3rd most-viewed cable news telecast with 676K A25-54 viewers, 27% ahead of FNC’s “The O’Reilly Factor” (532K) with Laura Ingraham sitting in.

• This was the largest A25-54 audience for Nancy Grace since Jan. 7, 2009 (a broadcast which also centered on the Caylee Anthony case).

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.