A wild Presidential debate TV
rumble -- with the President continually interrupting, as noted by the moderator, Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace -- did not pull in record levels of
viewers.
The first of three planned Presidential debates between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was down 13% to 73.1 million TV viewers across 16 networks versus the first
Presidential debate in 2016 between Trump and Hillary Clinton, which pulled in 84 million viewers.
Among the top nine TV networks, Fox News Channel came in with 17.8 million viewers,
followed by ABC at 12.6 million, NBC with 9.7 million, CNN at 8.3 million, MSNBC with 7.2 million, CBS at 6.4 million, Fox Television Network with 5.4 million, Fox Business Network at 758,000 and CNN
en Espanol, with 51,000 viewers.
Other networks that aired the debate include Univision, Telemundo, PBS, Newsmax, Newsy, Vice, and WGN America.
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Nielsen says
connected TV platforms can contribute 11% for TV political events.
The debate ran from 9 p.m. to approximately 11 p.m. ET.
Of the 73.1 million total viewers, viewers 55
and up comprised 40.5 million, with 35- to-54-year-old viewers at 20.3 million and 18-34 viewers at 8.4 million.
Vizio’s Inscape says CNN and MSNBC were the only two of those
networks to show rising viewership, with programming analysis content that followed the actual debate.
Inscape says nearly 60% of smart TVs tuned in to the debate. Inscape has a
panel of more than 16 million smart TV sets.