CNN Biden-Trump debate draws 51.3 million TV viewers, a major drop from 2020The highly anticipated first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign averaged 51.3 million television viewers Thursday, far below what the first-time President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump faced off in 2020. Early ratings across various networks put the audience at 48.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen data provided by CNN. The network averaged 8.74 million viewers to itself — a 5% improvement over the audience for the first 2020 debate. Fox News, the ratings leader in cable news, edged out CNN for first place on the night with 8.8 million viewers, down dramatically from the 17.8 million viewers who watched the its coverage of the first 2020 debate. ABC was the most-watched broadcast network for the event with 8.69 million viewers, followed by NBC (5.17 million) and CBS (4.8 million) and MSNBC (3.9 million), Fox broadcast network (3.48 million), Telemundo (814,000), Univision (704,000), Fox Business Network (372,000) and HLN (251,000).

Source: Los Angeles Times June 28, 2024 21:38 UTC