TV Ratings: Election Night Viewing Drops Sharply
TV viewing on election night dropped off considerably from four years ago.
Primetime coverage of the presidential election averaged 42.29 million viewers across 18 cable and broadcast networks from 7-11 p.m. ET, according to final same-day ratings from Nielsen. That’s a steep, 26 percent decline from four years ago, which drew 56.92 million viewers, and the least watched election night since the ratings service began keeping total viewer tallies in 2000.
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Nielsen also says 22.6 percent of TV households (28.45 million) watched election coverage Tuesday, the lowest percentage ever dating to 1960. Donald Trump was elected to his second term, with most news outlets calling the race early Wednesday morning.
The great majority of Tuesday night’s TV audience — about 38.45 million people — was tuned in to the big four broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) and three biggest cable news channels (CNN, Fox News and NBC). Mirroring the overall decline, all them brought in smaller primetime audiences than they did in 2020.
Fox News led the 8-11 p.m. ET block with 10.32 million viewers watching coverage anchored by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. MSNBC (6.01 million) finished second, narrowly beating ABC’s 5.9 million. NBC averaged 5.51 million viewers, followed by CNN (5.1 million), CBS (3.61 million) and the Fox broadcast network (2 million from 8-10 p.m. ET).
The remaining audience was spread across The CW, Merit Street Media, Scripps News, Telemundo, Univision, CNBC, CNNe, Fox Business, Newsmax, NewsNation and PBS.
CNN suffered the steepest percentage decline from 2020, with its TV audience dropping by 46 percent (from 9.41 million). CNN notes, however that its streaming service CNN Max recorded its best day ever, and other digital outlets were on par with the last presidential election. Fox News is down by about 27 percent, and MSNBC fell off by 21 percent — but finished ahead of CNN on a presidential election night for the first time and also had record online traffic. ABC and NBC had more modest declines (6 percent and 5 percent, respectively, while CBS fell by 20 percent and the Fox broadcast network slipped by a third.
Nov. 6, 3:35 p.m. Updated throughout with final election night ratings.
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