Cable community CNN hosted the primary 2024 presidential debate and, like Donald Trump, might presumably be seen as a winner from Thursday evening’s key political occasion.
And whereas CNN might have received, one other media firm might have been a much bigger winner from the controversy.
What Occurred: Thousands and thousands of viewers tuned into the primary presidential debate, which featured Trump and President Joe Biden in a head-to-head matchup forward of the 2024 presidential election.
CNN, which is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery WBD, hosted the controversy and allowed different media firms to simulcast the 90-minute occasion, which featured two industrial breaks.
In response to CNN, 47.9 million viewers watched Thursday’s debate, primarily based on preliminary estimates from Nielsen. CNN supplied a reside feed of the controversy freed from cost however with a number of guidelines associated to presentation and branding, with 22 networks agreeing to simulcast.
Listed here are the viewership figures by community, as reported by Axios:
Fox Information: 8.82 million
CNN: 8.75 million
ABC: 8.70 million
NBC: 5.17 million
CBS: 4.81 million
MSNBC: 3.94 million
FOX: 3.48 million
Fox Enterprise: 372,000
HLN: 251,000
CNN Espanol: 46,000
Fox Information, which is a unit of Fox Company FOXFOXA, ranked first within the preliminary rankings. Whereas the rankings might change, the truth that Fox beat or had near the identical viewership as CNN could also be a testomony to the robust political viewership of Fox Information.
Fox additionally dominated total with Fox Information rating first and Fox and Fox Enterprise additionally rating within the high 10. Collectively, the three networks had over 12 million viewers in comparison with the greater than 9 million viewers for CNN, CNN-owned HLN and CNN Espanol.
Fox Information additionally ranked first in protection of each presidential debates within the 2020 election, which weren’t hosted by any particular person community and had been broadcast broadly.
Different media firms like Walt Disney Firm DIS-owned ABC and Paramount International PARAPARAA-owned CBS additionally noticed robust viewership.
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Why It is Necessary: CNN broke a number of information with its hosted presidential debate, together with being essentially the most watched occasion in CNN historical past and essentially the most watched CNN program on the Max streaming platform.
CNN additionally had over 30 million views on its digital platforms, together with its YouTube channel.
The presidential debate can be essentially the most watched non-sports tv occasion of 2024 up to now, when complete viewership is counted.
Viewership of the primary 2024 presidential debate was down considerably from the final two presidential elections. The primary presidential debate between Trump and Biden in 2020 was watched by 73 million individuals and the primary presidential debate of 2016 between Hillary Clinton and Trump was watched by a document 84 million viewers.
The primary debate of 2024 was watched by 35% much less individuals than the primary debate of 2020.
Consideration now turns to a second presidential debate set for Sept. 10 and shall be hosted by ABC. The occasion shall be broadcast on ABC, ANBC Information and Hulu, with plans to simulcast to different networks as nicely.
The second debate of the 2020 presidential election was watched by 63 million viewers. Based mostly on the general response to Thursday’s debate, even fewer individuals might tune in a second time round.
Debates may very well be good for media firms and the continued political cycle will probably result in larger promoting income for the businesses. Decrease viewership from the 2020 cycle and decrease demand for a second debate may very well be gadgets to look at going ahead.
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