Alec Baldwin's Debut Gives MSNBC Spike In Viewers, Dip In Demo

Alec Baldwin got quite a few people to stay "Up Late" with him on Friday.

The "30 Rock" star's MSNBC debut began with an hour-long interview with New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio.

The show drew mixed reviews, but 654,000 people tuned in to see what the fuss was about. That's a 53 percent increase in total viewers from the week before.

However, the news was not all delightful. "Up Late" drew 7 percent fewer viewers in the crucial 25-54 demo than the previous Friday.

MSNBC lost to Fox News, as it so often does, but did manage to beat CNN, which suffered a 58 percent loss in demo viewers compared to last week, and a 52 percent decrease in viewers overall.

Also on HuffPost:

"; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });