A quick followup to Jazz’s weekend post recounting the bemused musings of Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, on the debut of Megyn Kelly’s new evening show on Fox News last week. There was nothing explosive about Kelly’s ratings after Monday night’s first showing, but her viewership in the demo more than doubled on Tuesday night — and Griffin was mighty perturbed about that. “Tuesday — you guys should be doing some investigations; I have never seen it in all my years of cable — same overnight, same everything. And they doubled their ratings in a day? It is impossible,” he insisted. “I have never seen it. They did election-night numbers in the demo Tuesday.”

The Nielsen Company evidently went ahead with Griffin’s suggestion and double-checked Kelly’s numbers, and the NY Daily News confirms the precise outcome I bet you were expecting: That Kelly’s show did indeed trounce Maddow’s on its second evening.

Nielsen has conducted an investigation into the ratings for Megyn Kelly’s new Fox News Channel show, “The Kelly File,” following grousing by MSNBC chief Phil Griffin.

The investigation has revealed that the numbers for Kelly are accurate.

Kelly’s numbers came back down from their out-of-this-world breakout and settled into Fox’s normal orbit of merely running circles around MSNBC for the rest of the week, but as Jazz already suggested, it may have taken a day or so for people to catch on/remember that Fox was debuting their new lineup and check it out (and I would also wonder Monday night football could have had a small something to do with it). “Impossible”? Hardly.

Addendum: Extra evidence from MediaBistro, emphasis mine:

A new primetime lineup, coupled with the second week of the government shutdown, propelled Fox News into the top five ad-supported cable networks during the week of October 7. FNC placed fourth in both primetime and total day, averaging 1,905,000 and 1,170,000 viewers, respectively.

MSNBC placed 20th in primetime, with 803,000 viewers, and 18th in total day, with 503,000 viewers. CNN placed 32nd in primetime and 26th in total day, averaging 508,000 and 433,000 viewers, respectively.