This is just a quick drive-by snippet of a diary. Trump’s reality TV oriented SOTU address crashed and burned in early ratings Deadline.com. They came in with under 16 million viewers in the fast ratings for the major networks, the earliest viewpoint on likely ratings.
That is down from 2019, by a lot.
With non-adjusted fast affiliate results just in, the 2020 SOTU pulled in a mere 15.9 million viewers on the Big 4 networks in the 9 – 10:30 PM ET slot. That’s a dive of 21% from the early numbers of the 82-minute 2019 SOTU, when the drama in and out of the House chamber seemed relatively milder, if you can believe that in this era.
Overall, CBS was tops last night among the broadcasters with 4.6 million viewers. With everyone tumbling from 2018, last year’s number #1, NBC brought in 4.4 million viewers, ABC had 3.6 million and FOX drew 3.4 million. Focusing a little tighter on who was really watching, NBC and FOX were tied among adults 18-49 with a 0.9 rating each. That’s a hard drop of 36% and 18% respectively for the networks in the key demo from the 2019 SOTU
I shall try and keep this updated once the fuller Nielsen’s go public. But, no matter which way the masters of misinformation try to spin this, Trump’s ratings are not TV gold.
Perhaps it was not just folks like me who had enough with the spectacle of a drugged-up septuagenarian stumbling over his own lies — and tuned out.
Wednesday, Feb 5, 2020 · 9:02:56 PM +00:00
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ItsSimpleSimon
Just a quick update to note that the larger field of cable news viewers are now reported out. (Also at Deadline.com).
Topped once again by a surging Fox News Channel and its audience of 11.5 million, the combined results from FNC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox Business, FOX, ABC, CBS and NBC brought in 34.2 million viewers – a big double digit drop from last year’s final SOTU numbers.
By big, they mean huge.
To be specific, and granted we don’t have metrics from PBS, Univision and a few others yet, that’s a 27% plunge overall from last year, which had a slight bounce from 2018. In fact, all nets and cablers were down except FNC, who saw a 2% bop up in viewership. In the FNC dominated 9 – 10:30 PM ET slot, a soundly beaten CNN and MSNBC had audiences of 2.8 million and 2.2 million, respectively.
Given that whenever live TV and streaming live TV is available, live TV garners >95% of the eyeballs, this is not attributable to Trumpies being more likely to stream. It is reasonable to call Fat Nixon. SOTU season 2020 a ratings bust.
Harbinger of things to come? We can but hope.