Fox News wins cable race with State of the Union coverage and analysis

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President Obama’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday evidently fired up the opposition on Fox News.

An average of 5 million total viewers watched the address on Fox, handily beating the 3 million for CNN and 2.5 million for MSNBC, according to the Nielsen Co.

Fox did even better with its post-speech analysis, which scored 5.4 million viewers and was largely critical of Obama. ‘The president didn’t really offer much,’ Fox anchor Brit Hume said.

The broadcast networks were on a ‘sustaining’ basis -- that is, not commercially supported -- and therefore did not have their ratings officially measured. However, Nielsen will report an aggregate viewing figure for the address later Wednesday.

-Scott Collins (@scottcollinsLAT)