G.O.P. Debate Draws 12.8 Million Viewers

The first Republican debate on Wednesday night time drew an viewers of 12.8 million viewers, based on Nielsen, indicating strong curiosity regardless of the absence of former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner within the race.

The viewership determine, which incorporates totals from each Fox News (11.1 million viewers) and the Fox Business Network (1.7 million), was considerably greater than the rest on tv on Wednesday night time, and outperformed the published community totals mixed. It was additionally the most-watched cable telecast of the yr outdoors of sports activities, surpassing an episode of Paramount’s “Yellowstone,” which had 8.2 million viewers, based on Nielsen.

The viewers whole, nonetheless, is a far cry from the document 24 million viewers who tuned in to Fox News for the opening Republican debate within the 2016 election cycle, which featured Mr. Trump on a debate stage for the primary time. Nor did it attain the 18.1 million who watched one of many early Democratic debates in June 2019.

But the determine nonetheless exceeded expectations of some tv executives, who had believed that the numbers may very well be low given Mr. Trump’s absence in addition to cable tv’s decreased presence in American houses in contrast with only a few years in the past.

Mr. Trump, main by a large margin within the polls and engaged in a working feud with Fox, skipped the controversy. Instead, he appeared for an interview with Tucker Carlson — the previous prime-time star, who was ousted by Fox News this yr — on X, the platform previously often called Twitter. The interview was posted shortly earlier than the controversy started on Wednesday night.

Mr. Trump declared his X interview a “blockbuster” on Thursday morning. It just isn’t clear, nonetheless, how many individuals watched the interview. Anytime customers on X scroll previous a submit with the video of their feed, it counts as a “view” — one of many few metrics the social community makes public — whether or not they watched the video or not. Nielsen’s tv scores extra rigorously observe the quantity of people that watched a program.

The Fox News debate featured eight candidates, who usually sparred aggressively with each other. They had been Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Tim Scott, Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum.

The Fox News debate moderators, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, spent about 10 minutes of questions on Mr. Trump and his 4 legal indictments, with Mr. Baier saying he needed to acknowledge the “elephant not in the room.”

The subsequent Republican debate can be on Sept. 27 on Fox Business.