Republican National Convention Night 3 Dips 13%

Will Thorne
·2 min read

Night 3 of the Republican National Convention delivered the smallest viewership tally to date, dropping 13% from the previous night.

Wednesday night’s proceedings drew around 15.8 million total viewers across all the broadcast and cable news networks, roughly a 2 million viewer dip on Tuesday night. For comparison, the third night of the Democratic National Convention was watched by 22.8 million viewers.

Looking at the networks individually, Fox News dipped around 11% from the night before, but still easily led the way with 7.1 million viewers. That’s pretty much the same audience the network drew for night 1.

All the other networks were closely bunched together, as NBC came second once again with just under 2 million total viewers (down from 2.5 million the night before). ABC came third with 1.9 million, followed by CBS with 1.8 million. CBS was in fact the only network to gain viewers from night 2. CNN’s coverage drew 1.5 million viewers, and MSNBC came last with just under 1.5 million.

In terms of the key news demographic of people aged 25-54, Fox News was way ahead with 1.4 million. NBC was technically its nearest competition at 595,000, followed by ABC at 534,000. CBS and CNN were neck and neck with 497,000 and 487,000 respectively, as MSNBC finished last with 311,000.

Both the 2020 DNC and RNC are on course to be substantially down on the last edition, which isn’t necessarily surprising given that much of this year’s conventions are pre-taped, and that television viewership as a whole has declined significantly in the last four years.

The biggest event of the RNC night 3 was probably the speech delivered by Vice President Mike Pence. President Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, Black desegregation activist Clarence Henderson, and Richard Grenell, the President former acting national intelligence director, also spoke.

Elsewhere on the night, the finale of “United We Fall” delivered a 0.5 rating among adults 18-49 and 3.1 million viewers (10% bump from the penultimate episode) for ABC. “Big Brother” comfortably topped the night for CBS, scoring a 1.1 rating and attracting 4.2 million pairs of eyeballs.

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