• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, August 25, 2023

The Republican presidential candidates’ debate on Wednesday drew an audience of 12.8 million across Fox News and the Fox Business Network: 11.1 million and 1.7 million, respectively, according to Nielsen. 

That was considerably better than some media pundits had predicted, given former President Trump’s absence and his calculated attempt to divert viewers by staging his own interview, on X, with Fox’s former star news host, Tucker Carlson. 

The event’s total viewership outpulled all other cable programming on Wednesday night and was the most-watched cable show this year to date outside of sports events, Nielsen reported. (An episode of “Yellowstone” that pulled 8.2 million viewers had previously led the non-sports pack.) Some 2.8 million of the debate's viewers were from the key 25-54 demographic.

MSNBC and CNN also saw elevated viewership on the night of the debate, including for their post-debate coverage running from 11 p.m. to 1 am. MSNBC's post-debate show drew 2.1 million total viewers and 257,000 in the key adults 25 - 54 demographic; CNN's drew 1.2 million total and 281,000 in the key demographic.

As for the Trump/Carlson interview, which was taped and posted on X just before the debate began, the views metric showed 236 million views 21 hours after it was posted, according to Mashable. 

Trump posted that this made the video the biggest on social media, “EVER, more than double the Super Bowl!” The audience for 2023’s Super Bowl was 115 million. 

That claim has been refuted by other sources. The “views” metric displayed on X actually show how many impressions a tweet receives, not video views. 

“An impression is counted when a user actively goes to the tweet page or when a tweet appears in a user’s timeline after being retweeted by another user,” explains Mashable. “Views are also counted when a tweet shows up on a user’s timeline via the recommendation algorithm. As such, a single user can be counted multiple times in the view count.” 

Video views, which are no longer displayed on X, count the number of times a piece of media content is played on the platform — that is, if it plays for two seconds or more, according to the tech site. Also, if a user attempts to scroll past a video, but more than 50% of the player is still visible on the screen for at least two seconds, a video view is counted. Autoplays, even sans sound, are also included in video counts.

Bottom line: Within that 21-hour window, the video “was actually played only 14.8 million times, for at least two seconds of the more than 46-minute interview — or just over 6% of the total 236 million times someone saw the post on X.”