Posted on 10/16/2020 3:40:23 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Instead of a debate, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden participated in dueling town halls on Thursday night and early ratings indicate the former vice president had a larger audience.
The two presidential candidates were originally scheduled to have their second debate, but concerns about a new coronavirus moved the event to a virtual format. After Trump refused to participate if it wasn't in person, Biden opted for a town hall moderated by ABC's George Stephanopoulos. On Wednesday, NBC announced Savannah Guthrie would moderate a town hall with Trump.
Having separate town halls taking place at the same time came under fire as critics said voters were forced to choose which one to watch in real time. With up to 95 percent of people already decided on who they're voting for, the majority of viewers watching likely picked the candidate they support—although former Today co-host Katie Couric speculated that some might tune into Trump's town hall given his unpredictability.
Nielsen ratings confirmed what people watching YouTube viewership counts already knew: more people tuned in to see what Biden had to say than Trump. ABC News' YouTube stream of Biden's town hall had a million more viewers than NBC News' live stream of Trump's.
In a head-to-head matchup between NBC and ABC, Biden had nearly four million more viewers, according to Nielsen. Although Trump took the lead in YouTube views when factoring in the CNBC live stream, MSNBC and CNBC television viewers weren't enough to edge Biden out of the top spot, according to preliminary data.
Adding the 671,000 CNBC and 1,740,000 MSNBC viewers to the 10,655,000 people that watched on NBC, a total of about 13.07 million people watched Trump's town hall, according to Nielsen Fast Nationals. Biden had 13.9 million viewers on ABC alone,
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
We recorded both, but started watching Trump, and the first ten minutes were like a rerun of “The Shining.” Guthrie was unhinged, eyes bulging and if we could have seen her notes there would have been repetitive lines, “Orange Man Bad”
Switched to Biden, hoping when asked a tough question he would start slobbering and asking for his mommy Jill. Didn’t happen, of course. So we settled on TUCKER CARLSON.
Of course it was us who watched. We wanted to see if lil Georgie would go there and if Grandpa Groundhog would make a fool of himself.
Convenient to ignore online numbers...
Trump had a 2:1 edge there.
But that doesn’t spin their narrative...
It would also be interesting to know when the numbers were tabulated. Many Trump viewers went to the Biden show after NBC closed their broadcast. The Biden-fest continued for another 35 minutes after Trump.
Same reason many people watch Nascar-for the crashes.
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