Posted on 07/23/2016 6:34:12 AM PDT by usafa92
The Republican National Convention clearly reached its crescendo on Thursday night. The four-day run-up until Donald Trump's accepting of the nomination, while giving a strong ratings performance, did not bring any atypical highs for the political meetup. Trump's speech didn't change that narrative by much.
With all three broadcast networks and cable news networks now tallied for the 10 p.m. hour, it appears just over 32 million viewers tuned into Trump's extended time on stage.
On the broadcast networks alone Thursday night, Trump's time on the stage brought in 12.3 million viewers to the 10 o'clock hour on through the speech's conclusion at 11:37 p.m. ET. NBC News led its fourth and final night of primetime coverage with an average 4.6 million viewers tuning in, per Nielsen Media's Fast Affiliate ratings. ABC News, which preciously topped CBS on Monday, averaged 3.9 million viewers. CBS News took 3.8 million viewers. Spanish-language net Univision contributed another 1.3 million viewers.
Cable news brought the biggest lifts — particularly for Fox News Channel and CNN. FNC, a favorite for right-leaning audiences, topped them all with 9.4 million viewers. And CNN, hitting an all-time high for its RNC coverage, also topped all of the broadcast networks with 5.5 million viewers. MSNBC, trailing, averaged 2.95 million viewers. (Nielsen's delivery of the 32-million stat also includes Fox Business Network, CNBC and NBC Universo.)
Prior to Thursday, the broadcast networks have been contributing in the area of 10 million viewers to gross RNC ratings. The cable news aggregate typically topped that showing by a million-or-so viewers. High ratings have certainly the candidate's mind. His latest tweet, as of Friday morning, crowed about the RNC ratings. But it is now clear his ratings record-breaking is limited to debate appearances.
To prove to be a bigger draw than RNC headliners of the recent past, Trump's final tally would need to be higher than 30.3 million to top Mitt Romney in 2012. The candidate already has that in the bag. But with nearly 40 million viewers tuning into John McCain in 2008, that showing will not be matched.
The TV race in the key news demographic of adults 25-54 saw rankings for total viewership hold. FNC (2.5 million) and CNN (1.9 million) topped them all, with NBC News (1.8 million) leading broadcast coverage. ABC (1.4 million), CBS (1.2 million) and MSNBC (927,000) followed.
Prior to Thursday, the 2016 RNC had been averaging 22 million viewers across eight ad-supported networks. That number is off a little, given the 1 million or so watching on PBS and a few other nets each night, but pretty accurate. And tracking down from 2008.
I watched it on Right Side News, streamed from their YouTube account.
Exactly. Everyone I knew live streamed it because the cable networks weren’t showing all the speakers. This is just more wishful thinking by the left leaning mainstream media.
I watched on C-SPAN, gavel to gavel.
I haven’t had cable for 10 years. I watched LIVE on youtube.
They can be “giddy” about the numbers all they want. They are lower because their industry is in decline.
Save this story for when the ratings for Hillary’s speech come out. I bet the spin will be a little ... different.
I was just going to point that out.this DOES NOT account for those who watched on CSPAN......We could not stand all the talking heads who were not showing each speech so we watched on CSPAN........as many did soooooooo Media spins things again it would appear
Yup. How many streamed Trump? Millions.
Millennial me, I don’t have a TV, guess I don’t count.
I watched on youtube and cspan.
Same here....ONLY C-Span. The cable news networks all talked over the speakers/events.
I wonder what C-Span’s viewership count was.
You’re right, the comparison between 2008 and 2016 doesn’t account for the fact that television is quickly becoming yesterday’s medium, especially among those of us who can’t stand the asinine MSM talking heads.
We DVR’d CSPAN all four days.
I think you are right. I only watched the convention on TV on Fri. The rest of the week, I went over the speeches from Utube links the following morning.
I was very disappointed with the coverage on TV cable, Fox. Just talking heads, leaving out speaker after speaker, not even announcing who was at the lectern.
If you want to see and hear most of the speeches, you have to use Utube or CSPAN or streaming.
OANN did a good job. Some commentary while the band played, but nothing during the speeches.
I did not watch one frigging bit of it that was sourced by any ‘network’ like ABC,CBS, NBC, CNN or Fox. They are all dead to me. Their BS background, commentary and opinions are lies and manipulation of the truth as far as I’m concerned.
Yeah, I watched it on YouTube.
No doubt lots more people watching online than 8 years ago.
Didn’t find any C-SPAN numbers. But, PBS said it averaged 2.3 million viewers, not included in the ratings.
I too watched CSPAN to get around the talking heads. I thought CSPANS camera work was excellent with their many crowd shots. They really captured the essence of the convention.
that’s because more people watched online this time..
less people have TVs than in McCain’s year..2008..
they can measure how many people were online instead of guessing the TV ratings using Nelson...
Plus many people could have watched the video later online instead of LIVE...
I was tired myself and went to bed at 7.30PM and watched the CSPAN video online hours later..
this article means nothing..
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