Trump’s Address last night did very well in the ratings, topping last week’s oscars by 11 million viewers:
Ratings are in.
Trump got 43.4 million viewers.
Oscars: 32.9 million. #Winninghttps://t.co/925cabi0AHhttps://t.co/YB0jnlo5UZ— Kyle Smith (@rkylesmith) March 1, 2017
However the more apt comparison to Obama’s first Address to Congress and Trump still has a way to go to catch up:
Across this landscape, Trump’s address clocked a collective 43.4 million viewers. Which means Trump still has got a way to go to match the 52.4M viewers who tuned in to watch President Obama’s first address before the Joint Session of Congress, or President Clinton’s 66.7 million in his first such address in 1993, back when the TV universe looked different and live-streaming was not such a “thing.”
For comparison’s sake, Obama’s initial overnight rating was only 33.4. So Perhaps when the full ratings come in, Trump will have made up some or most of that distance.
It’s too early to say he lost to Obama, but that’s what most Democrat news sites are doing.
Deadline points out that “Nielsen will issue final Trump speech stats this afternoon, which will include more viewers who watched via additional cable networks’ coverage.”
As far as which network did the best last night, it looks like Fox News was the big winner in overall viewers:
Fox News Channel blew past the broadcast networks to become the most-watched channel in all of television for coverage of President Trump’s address to the Joint Session of Congress. FNC clocked a hefty 10.8M viewers during the speech, besting usual frontrunner NBC, logging 9.14 million viewers, as well as CBS’s 7.2M, ABC’s 6.1M, and Fox broadcast network’s 3.1M.
In the demo, NBC was first with Fox News close behind:
In the news demo, ages 25-54, FNC’s 2.8 million viewers ranked No. 1 to NBC’s 3.3M. ABC was next with 2.07M, CBS’s 1.9M, CNN’s 1.5M, Fox broadcast network’s 1.4M, MSNBC’s 670K, and FBN’s 118K.
I think their paragraph has some typos. I think what they are trying to say is NBC had 3.3M, Fox News followed suit with 2.8M, and the rest were below.
I’ll be on the lookout for the Nielsen numbers and update (or post new) when they are out.