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.
It was exclusively CSPAN in our home. Any commentary I wanted I got from free republic.
I think millions watched it online.
Yup, I watched every night on youtube. TV ratings don’t equate into how many people actually watched anymore.
>Yup, I watched every night on youtube. TV ratings don’t equate into how many people actually watched anymore.
Same.
8 years ago, youtube live streaming didn’t exist.
Many in my family listened to the Cspan Radio stream. These ratings are more an indictment of the MSM than Trump. They should be panicked, not giddy.
As I was at work when the speech was given, and was unable to see/hear it 'live' I watched on YouTube after I returned home from work...
the infowarrior
Same here!
Donald Trump has also been on tv non-stop the past year.
It’s not just that most people tuned in to see Sarah in 2008, a lot of people skipped the MSM this time around.
Carl “I miss the 70s” Bernstein was excoriating Fox news the other day: you know, the “conservative network”; but Fox’s mascara’d Shemp Sheepherder yesterday was repeatedly insisting the Munich shooter was right wing.
A lot of people are finally going through what a lot of us went through years ago: disgust with slanted news wranglers.
CSPAN and online streaming were probably high numbers.
I watched some on streaming but watched the evening events via CSPAN.
McCain had Sarah Palin. Trump didn’t.
We watched via our Firestick & the RNC app most of the time. Watched Trump’s speech via PBS cuz the RNC stream bogged down.
Vote Trump 2016
“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.”
Interesting enough... These numbers almost match the candidates FB page “likes”. DJT = 9+million HRC = 4.5million
mugs
Why do they not count CSPAN?
Me too.
I googled rnc
Th results were:
rnc
rnclive
I clicked on rnclive
what i watched i watched on CSpan....i have to admit i forced myself to watch the morons on CNN after Trump’s speech and got everything i expected though watching them view the results of their own polls was priceless!
CSPAN all 4 days except when traveling then it was right side broadcasting
I watched it on 347 also. Got to see Laura’s speech instead of the Fox panel.
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