The primary presidential debate of the 2024 cycle, hosted on Thursday by CNN, attracted 51.3 million viewers, in line with information supplied by the community — far fewer than 2020’s first debate, which drew 73.1 million.
“It’s very clear that the decline in final evening’s debate viewership was principally about TV viewing being sharply decrease in June than it’s in October,” Michael Mulvihill, an analytics professional for Fox, wrote on X.
Debate viewership has fluctuated from cycle to cycle. This century, the highest-rated first debate of a marketing campaign cycle was the Sept. 26, 2016, matchup between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, which attracted 84 million viewers. The three contests that yr averaged 74 million viewers.
Debate viewership usually tails off after the primary debate of the cycle, and the second debate of the 2020 election solely introduced in 63 million viewers. However that pattern will most likely be reversed this yr, contemplating that ABC’s scheduled debate on Sept. 10 will happen a lot nearer to the election.
Whereas CNN produced and operated the occasion, the community supplied the feed to different tv networks, which have been required to stick to a set of pointers to have the ability to air the published.
CNN’s broadcast of the controversy drew 9.5 million viewers, Fox Information 9.3 million and MSNBC 4.1 million. Had CNN not allowed different networks to air the controversy, CNN most likely would have attracted a bigger viewers.
The quantity doesn’t come shut to truly representing the viewership of the controversy, contemplating how many individuals watched the occasion on a streaming platform or via clips shared on a social media platform. Practically 10 million folks watched the controversy on CNN’s YouTube web page, which was additionally embedded on the web sites of many information publications.
This story has been up to date to incorporate full rankings information from the Nielsen rankings company.
