This Is America’s Most Popular Newscaster

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 30, 7:30AM EDT

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This Is America’s Most Popular Newscaster — © gageskidmore / Flickr

Two generations ago, there were three evening news shows. Before the dawn of cable TV programming, Americans got their news from ABC, NBC and CBS. Many people think the greatest news anchors of all time worked in this period. Walter Cronkite held the CBS anchor chair from 1962 until 1981. Known as “the most trusted man in America,” he covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the first moon landing and the entire Vietnam War. When he turned against the war on-air on February 27, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson reportedly said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Today’s anchors have often been called lightweights compared to Cronkite.

More recently, cable channels such as CNN, Fox and MSNBC broadcast news 24/7, so we see the hosts and reporters daily. Over time, they become almost like friends or family. More than their ability to explain complex topics and hard news in a clear, concise manner, they also manage to engage us with a calming personality, wit and the ability to make us like as well as trust them.

To determine the most popular TV newscaster (they are no longer called anchors for the most part) in America, 24/7 Tempo developed an index based on two equally weighted measures of popularity: the average number of daily Wikipedia pageviews between March 11, 2019, and March 10, 2022, and the percentage of respondents who reported having a positive opinion of the broadcaster in a survey by market research firm YouGov.
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The most popular newscaster is Anderson Cooper. Here are the details:

Daily average Wikipedia pageviews: 7,851
Respondents with positive opinion of broadcaster: 44%
Years active: 1990 to present
Primary network: CNN

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Click here to see all of the most popular TV newscasters in America.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.