• by Wayne Friedman , November 21, 2019

Daytime TV coverage of day four of the impeachment hearings rose a collective 8% on Wednesday versus the previous day, among the major three 24-hour cable TV news networks.

Wednesday’s hearing coverage — featuring compelling testimony of Gordon Sondland, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union — posted a Nielsen-measured preliminary collective 6.54 million viewers versus 6.06 million on Thursday.

All three cable TV news networks posted individual gains on Wednesday versus the previous day, withFox News Channel at 2.51 million (up from 2.25 million), MSNBC at 2.36 million (from 2.25 million) and CNN at 1.68 million (from 1.56 million).

Broadcast networks had a mixed picture on day four of the impeachment hearings: ABC was at 1.59 million (9 a.m. to 3:59 p.m), down from 1.9 million the day before (9 a.m. to 2 p.m.), while NBC came in at 1.55 million (9 a.m. to 4 p.m.), off its 1.7 million (9 a.m. to 2 p.m.) and CBS had 1.78 million (9 a.m. to 2 p.m.), rising from 1.75 million (9 a.m. to 12:21 p.m.)

Looking at all six networks, there was a total of 11.45 million daytime viewers, versus on Tuesday (day three) — 11.43 million viewers for the similar daytime period of 9 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. (for cable networks) and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. (for the broadcast networks.