The Nielsen company says an estimated 32.2 million people watched Donald Trump deliver his GOP nomination acceptance speech.
Thursday’s audience topped the 30.3 million who watched nominee Mitt Romney’s 2012 speech but fell well short of John McCain’s audience of 38.9 million at the 2008 Republican convention.
This year’s tally reflects viewership across 10 commercial networks, Nielsen said Friday, topped by Fox News Channel with 9.4 million viewers.
The channel’s triumph came the same day that its founder and chief, Roger Ailes, resigned amid a former anchorwoman’s claims of workplace misconduct.
For the closing hour of the four-day convention, CNN drew 5.5 million viewers; NBC, 4.6 million; ABC, 3.9 million; CBS, 3.8 million; and MSNBC, 3 million.
PBS, the non-commercial Public Broadcasting Service, drew 1.9 million viewers.
The Democratic convention begins next week in Philadelphia.
The Associated Press contributed to this article
St. Edgar says
The diminished ratings of Trumps acceptance speech may have been a consequence Salem Broadcasting’s “radio Talk show hosts” who covered the convention all day long on the radio. They presented themselves as “conservatives”, but proved support for the election of Hillary by doing their best to discourage a conservative turnout, by insulting Trump and all who said good things about him by vomiting their insults over the top of everything they said. This included his acceptance speech. It went on –All week long.
Jay Bell says
Yes–it is clear that almost the entire MSM is in the tank for Clinton. Debbie Wasserman Schultz even tried to muscle MSNBC–informing Chuck Todd that “the negative coverage of Hillary must stop”. Had I been Todd, I would have responded, “Or what?”
ken says
oh yeah…………………or what Debbie? you going to pitch a fit like you always have done in the past? done let the door smack your slabby ass on the way out
brenda says
she is on the way out, she is opening the convention today and then is stepping down. Probably to keep from being questioned on Clinton antics or to save her own ass and still draw her pension, or maybe to be able to finally tell the truth about Clinton.