Fox News Breaks Ratings Record with 4th Night of GOP Convention Coverage
On Thursday night, as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination, President Donald Trump vowed to reach “stunning new heights.”
Fox News was reaching them with him.
The Republican National Convention’s conclusion from 10 p.m. to 11:45 p.m. Thursday, during which Trump delivered his speech, drew 9.2 million viewers to Fox News, the network said.
In reporting its results, Fox noted that no other network — including CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC — had more than 2.6 million viewers.
Fox far outdistanced its cable news competition. CNN averaged 2.2 million viewers during the 10 p.m. to 11:45 p.m time slot, while MSNBC grabbed 1.9 million viewers.
Fox had an average of 7.8 million viewers during prime time Thursday night — which the network noted was “the highest primetime total viewership average for any political party convention in cable news history — compared to 2 million for MSNBC and 1.8 million for CNN, according to Nielsen Media Research.
“In addition ‘Hannity’ averaged 7.8 million viewers and ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ averaged 6.3 million viewers on Thursday, as both programs garnered the highest ratings in network history for their respective timeslots,” Fox reported.
Overall, Fox News averaged 7.9 million total viewers during the four-day GOP convention.
Great total numbers for the Republican National Convention. Blows Democrat National Convention away. Also, much bigger fund raising numbers!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2020
The network also walloped the competition in the 25-54 age range coveted by advertisers.
Fox drew 2.2 million viewers in that age range during Trump’s speech, against 757,000 for CNN and 391,000 for MSNBC.
Americans also turned to Fox News online, with 2.6 million interactions across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram on Thursday, the network reported, citing the social media marketing company Socialbakers.
During his speech Thursday, Trump pictured the election as a war between two starkly different cultures.
“We must reclaim our independence from the left’s repressive mandates,” he said. “Americans are exhausted, trying to keep up with the latest lists of approved words and phrases, and the ever more restrictive political decrees.
“Many things have a different name now, and the rules are constantly changing. The goal of cancel culture is to make Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated and driven from society as we know it. The far left wants to coerce you into saying what you know to be false and scare you out of saying what you know to be true,” the president added.
Trump said Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden “takes his marching orders from liberal hypocrites who drive their cities into the ground while fleeing from the scene of the wreckage.
“The same liberals want to eliminate school choice while they enroll their children into the finest private schools in the land. They want to open the borders while living in walled off compounds and communities and the best neighborhoods in the world. They want to defund the police while they have armed guards for themselves,” he added.
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