When Have I Got News For You premiered on CNN in 2024, it seemed more like an experiment than anything else.
The American adaptation of the long-running British comedy panel show certainly had late-night pedigree: Daily Show alum Roy Wood Jr. was tapped to host, while Late Night with Seth Meyers veteran Amber Ruffin and comedian Michael Ian Black signed on as team captains.
The show is similarly stacked with late-night veterans behind the scenes, including executive producer Jim Biederman, co-executive producer Jodi Lennon, and head writer Mason Steinberg.
But CNN was putting it in what’s traditionally been a dead zone for cable news: Saturday nights.
Two years and four seasons later, the experiment has turned into one of CNN’s most unlikely ratings successes. And heading into its fifth-season premiere this weekend, Have I Got News For You has been doing something particularly unusual for a CNN program: beating Fox News.
During its fourth season, HIGNFY averaged 163,000 adults 25-54 at 9 p.m. Saturdays, compared with 102,000 for Fox News’ My View with Lara Trump, and won the demo in five of the six Saturdays on which the two shows went head-to-head.
That 25-54 figure matters. It’s the key demographic cable news networks use to sell advertising—and one in which Fox News typically holds a considerable advantage over CNN.
A year ago, the matchup looked very different.
During HIGNFY’s spring 2025 season, My View averaged 181,000 adults 25-54 to HIGNFY’s 87,000.
Some of that reversal can be attributed to My View coming down substantially from the audience it drew after its February 2025 launch. But HIGNFY didn’t simply move ahead because its competition declined. Its own audience has been growing—fast.
Comparing the first half of 2026 with the same period in 2025, HIGNFY’s audience among adults 25-54 increased 87%, according to Nielsen Live+7 data, making it CNN’s fastest-growing primetime program.
Nothing else on CNN’s primetime schedule came particularly close. NewsNight, now CNN’s top-rated primetime show, was the next-fastest grower at 20% in the demo year over year. Anderson Cooper 360 grew 16%, CNN’s Saturday-night re-air of Real Time with Bill Maher was up 12%, and The Source with Kaitlan Collins gained 11%.
Fox News still has the upper hand when it comes to sheer audience size. My View averaged roughly 1.5 million total viewers during HIGNFY’s fourth season, compared with about 1 million for the CNN comedy. But HIGNFY grew in total viewers, too. Its total audience was up 47% year over year.
There’s another indication that HIGNFY has developed an audience of its own: it’s now outperforming the show CNN uses to lead into it.
CNN airs HIGNFY behind a Saturday-night encore of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. A year ago, HIGNFY trailed its Maher lead-in. During Season 4, though, it built on Maher’s audience among adults 25-54, averaging 163,000 viewers in the demo compared with 102,000 for Real Time.
Have I Got News For You returns to CNN with its Season 5 premiere this Saturday, Sept. 12 at 9 p.m. ET.
