Democratic National Convention Night Three Grows to 21 Million Viewers

Night three of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) was the most watched to date.

Wednesday night’s proceedings drew around 21 million total viewers across the broadcast and cable news networks, a 15% jump from the night before.

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The biggest gain was scored by MSNBC, which came out on top for the third night running with 6.3 million viewers (up 21% from the night before). CNN came second with 5.5 million viewers, a whopping 1.3 million viewer increase from Tuesday. Fox News’ coverage scored around 2.2 million viewers, staying almost exactly the same as the first two nights.

Switching focus to the broadcast networks, NBC was first with 2.53 million viewers, followed very closely by ABC with 2.48 million. CBS came last once again with just under 2 million pairs of eyeballs tuning in.

In terms of the main news demographic of viewers aged 25-54, CNN led the night with 1.6 million, followed by MSNBC with 1.3 million. Next came NBC with 805,000, followed by ABC with 638,00 and CBS with 533,000. Fox News was right behind with 491,000.

That 21 million total is a decent 2 million viewer increase on the first night, which itself was down 27% dip from the previous convention in 2016. For comparison, night 3 of the previous convention drew just over 24 million viewers.

However, once again it’s worth noting that the 2020 DNC being down on the last edition isn’t necessarily surprising given that much of this year’s convention is pre-taped and that television viewership as a whole has declined significantly in the last four years.

After Michelle Obama stole the show on night 1, it was the turn of her husband Barack Obama and Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris to lead the way on night 3.

So far, speakers on all three nights have focused on the “three crises” Democrats are seeking to underscore: the pandemic, mass unemployment and the crisis of racial justice.

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