• by Wayne Friedman , November 11, 2016

Cable TV news networks continue to post higher advertising dollars in the days leading up to and after the big political upset of the Presidential election.

From October 11 through November 10, the three big cable news networks pulled in $184 million in national advertising, up from $68.4 million over the same time period a year ago, according to iSpot.tv.

For this election, Fox has pulled in $101.1 million, with CNN at $63.5 million and MSNBC at $19.4 million. A year before, for the same time period, Fox pulled in $30.1 million while CNN pulled in $27.3 million and MSNBC, $11.0 million.

For the two-day period -- election day and the day after this year, November 8-9 -- Fox News Channel was at $5.1 million, with by CNN pulling in $2.9 million and MSNBC, $2.3 million.

TV networks can run fewer commercials during actual election-night coverage due to breaking news. For example, CNN had 1,446 airings of commercials on November 8-9 2015 -- 731 airings of commercials for the same days this year. Fox News,was at 999 commercial airings this year versus 1,180 a year ago.

On election night, Nielsen says there were an average of 71 million viewers across 13 networks who watched the results -- 6% above the 66.8 million viewer mark level for 2012. For this election period, viewers 18-34 totaled 13.3 million; viewers 35-54, 22.5 million; and those 55 and older, 28.9 million.

Networks in 2016 include ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Telemundo, Univision, CNBC, CNN, Fox Business Network, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, TV One and Lifetime.

Fox News Channel seemed to have the best loyalty -- 62.5% of those who watched Fox News Channel stayed for at least five minutes during the 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. time period; with 11.2% of Fox viewers switching at times to CNN; and 3.1% channel flipping to MSNBC, according to Samba TV.

By contrast, for CNN, 60.6% stayed with that network with 42.7% of its viewers switching at times to Fox News; and 21.2% also switching to MSNBC.