For the first time in its 21-year history, MSNBC attracted the largest weekday primetime crowd of any cable network – news or un. MSNBC ended the week of July 17-21 with a weekday prime average of 2.34 million viewers, besting second-place Fox News Channel’s 2.25 million. But MSNBC also outstripped non-news cable nets. MSNBC previously was No.