Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- CNN, owned by Time Warner Inc., dropped to fourth place among cable news networks in prime-time weekday audience ratings in October after being surpassed by sister network HLN, according to Nielsen Co. data.

CNN averaged 201,000 viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday this month, Nielsen said in an e-mail today. Fox News finished first with 688,000 viewers a night in that age group; MSNBC came in second with 252,000; and HLN, also owned by Time Warner, averaged 220,000.

CNN was surpassed by MSNBC for the first time in U.S. weekday prime-time ratings in March when MSNBC moved into second place behind Fox News. In October, CNN had the smallest audience of the four major cable news channels at 8 p.m. with Campbell Brown and 10 p.m. with Anderson Cooper, according to Nielsen data cited in an e-mail by Alana Russo, a spokeswoman for MSNBC. Larry King finished third in the 9 p.m. slot, the only prime- time weekday hour when CNN didn’t place fourth.

“The question now is can straight-down-the-middle news continue to work?” Brian Steinberg, television editor at Advertising Age, said in an interview. The drop in ratings for some of CNN’s prime-time programs is “really big,” he said. “They’ve been this arbiter of straight news but they might need to change their thoughts about staying in the middle-of-the-road and start doing some things to appeal to younger viewers or more talk-oriented programs.”

Trailing Reruns

Time Warner, based in New York, fell 5 cents to $30.73 today in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. General Electric Co., owner of MSNBC parent NBC Universal, declined 19 cents to $15.01. News Corp., the owner of Fox News, dropped 5 cents to $12.21 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading.

Anderson Cooper at 10 p.m. trailed reruns of Keith Olbermann and Nancy Grace, according to the average for the month ended Oct. 23, as cited by MSNBC’s Russo.

“Anderson Cooper 360” averaged 210,000 viewers, while repeats of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” on MSNBC drew 218,000 and “Nancy Grace” on HLN got 222,000, according to the data cited by Russo. “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren” on Fox averaged 533,000.

“As we have said for years, we measure our audience across all CNN Worldwide platforms and throughout the day, not just prime time,” CNN said today in an e-mailed statement. “CNN provides quality journalism and our ratings reflect the news environment more than opinion programming does -- especially in prime time.”

Total-Day Viewers

CNN also said in the statement its networks top MSNBC in total-day viewers and that CNN.com leads the competition on the Internet. It averaged 142,000 viewers a day in October, including all time periods, among adults 25 to 54, while HLN drew 146,000 and MSNBC averaged 132,000, CNN said separately.

At 9 p.m., CNN makes its best showing with “Larry King Live” in third place. “Hannity” on Fox ranks first, the “Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC second and “The Joy Behar Show” on HLN is fourth, according to Nielsen data provided by MSNBC.

Fox News, created in 1996, overtook CNN in 2002 as the most-watched channel, luring viewers with a talk-show format.

To contact the reporters on this story: Sarah Rabil in New York at srabil@bloomberg.net; Brett Pulley in New York at bpulley@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 26, 2009 19:58 EDT