An attempt on former president Donald Trump‘s life Saturday led millions of viewers tune in to TV news coverage.
Broadcast networks and cable outlets quickly moved to special coverage of the shooting at a Trump campaign rally in Pennsylvania. One person was killed and three people, including Trump, were injured before Secret Service agents killed the shooter. Trump said a bullet grazed his ear; two rally attendees were listed in critical condition.
In primetime Saturday, a combined 16.07 million people watched coverage of the shooting on ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to early Nielsen figures (ratings data from NBC wasn’t immediately available). Viewing peaked in the 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT hour with almost 19 million people watching across those five outlets.
A similar number — 18.78 million — watched President Joe Biden‘s Oval Office address Sunday evening, albeit over seven channels: NBC and the Fox broadcast network are included in that figure.
Fox News was the most watched outlet in both instances. In primetime Saturday, it averaged 6.49 million viewers, well ahead of second-place ABC (3.08 million). CBS drew 2.69 million viewers; CNN, 2.45 million; and MSNBC, 1.36 million. For all five outlets, those numbers are way above the usual: Fox News has averaged about 1.2 million viewers on Saturday nights in recent weeks, while CNN and MSNBC are both under 500,000. Excluding sports, ABC and CBS have drawn under 2 million viewers each on recent Saturdays.
For the 8 p.m. ET hour on Saturday, Fox News brought in 7.12 million viewers, followed by ABC (3.97 million), CBS (3.4 million), CNN (2.8 million) and MSNBC (1.65 million).
On Sunday, Fox News drew 5.38 million viewers for the 8 p.m. ET hour for coverage of Biden’s Oval Office speech, where he called on people to “lower the temperature in our politics.” ABC again placed second with 3.77 million viewers, ahead of the 3.36 million for CBS. The Fox broadcast network averaged 2.29 million for the hour, followed by NBC (1.81 million), CNN (1.28 million) and MSNBC (883,000).
