Donald Trump White House Win Delivers Most Watched Election Night In Cable News History
Donald Trump’s improbable road to the White House continues to clock historic TV viewing levels. Last night’s long, dramatic Electoral College rollout brought cable news its biggest audience ever for an election night.
Between 7 PM, when many polls closed on the east coast, and 3 AM, when Hillary Clinton finally threw in the towel, Fox News Channel led with 12.2M viewers, as well as 4.8M viewers in the 25-54 news demographic. These are FNC’s highest numbers ever for an election night.
CNN logged 11.2M viewers in the same span of time, and a higher 5.7M viewers in the news demo. Another 5.2M total viewers, and 2.1M news demo viewers, chose MSNBC to the witness real estate developer turned reality TV star win the White House race.
Though the race wasn’t called until the 2-3 AM hour, FNC still had 9.8M viewers tuned at that ungodly hour (4M in the demo. CNN still had 6.5M watching (3.4M in the demo) and MSNBC clung to 2.9M total viewers (1.2M in the demo).
FNC peaked between midnight and 1 AM when 15.4M sat glued to the network as Trump’s path to the White House became clear. That included 6.183M news demo viewers.
CNN peaked earlier, in the 10-11 PM hour, logging a larger 7.201M viewers in the news demo, but a slightly smaller 14.022M total viewers. MSNBC topped out from 11 PM–midnight, when 6.833M were watching, including 3.01M viewers in the 25-54 age bracket.
CNN snagged the most watched Election Night primetime in cable news history; a record 13.258 million viewers tuned in to the network to the witness real estate developer turned reality TV star win the Electoral College race.
FNC followed with 12.112 million from 8-11 PM ET, and MSNBC lagged with 5.945 million. In the news demo, CNN was also No. 1 in primetime, with 6.655 million viewers, followed by FNC’s 4.638 million, and MSNBC’s 2.368 million.
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