1/6 hearing: The ratings report
BY BRIAN STELTER:
"Respectable" is the word I would use for the ratings after Thursday's prime-time presentation about 1/6. The TV coverage averaged more than 20 million American adults, according to Nielsen, and the event reached a far larger number through all manner of social and old-school media. (The above photo is from WaPo's streaming control room on Thursday.)
So, the numbers were respectable, given the fragmented state of TV – but other widely-carried political events have been able to net bigger audiences. For example, March's State of the Union address averaged 38 million viewers across sixteen channels. Veteran TV critic Ed Bark said it well: "Not a blockbuster, given breadth of coverage. But it certainly did well enough." CNN media analyst Bill Carter pointed out that "all we heard was 'people are tired of this, nobody’s gonna watch,'" so this result is "way more than naysayers expected." Three notes about the #'s:
>> More than 4.3 million watched on MSNBC and more than 2.7 million watched on CNN, between three and four times the typical prime-time audience for each...
>> Fox's Tucker Carlson, who made a whole show out of ignoring the hearing, averaged about 3.3 million viewers, an ordinary night for him...
>> Fox Business Network, which offered hearing coverage since Fox News didn't, netted barely 200,000 viewers. The right-wing channel Newsmax, which did show most of the hearing, had fewer than 150,000 viewers...
Do something positive.
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