CNN scored the largest debate in the network’s 36-year history, and MSNBC’s Debate 2 crowd also climbed compared to Debate 1 for last night’s second presidential debate.
Fox News viewers? Not so much.
Sunday’s debate was held last night’s second debate between GOP nom Donald Trump and Dem nom Hillary Clinton was held two days after Trump was compelled to apologize on TV for lewd comments made in 2005.
CNN scored the largest cable news audience for last night’s second presidential debate: 11.227 million viewers. That’s up 13% compared to the first debate, held last month. CNN also dominated in the news demo last night, clocking 4.824M viewers aged 25-54, outstripping FNC and MSNBC combined.
MSNBC, meanwhile, celebrated its largest audience ever for a presidential debate – 5.55M viewers – and its fourth best news-demo showing, 1.762M. MSNBC jumped 13% in total viewers compared to Debate 1; in the demo, the NBC-owned network climbed 11%.
Conversely, Fox News Channel skidded by 14% in overall audience, to 9.861M viewers, after dominating the 2+ cable news derby for Debate 1. In the news demo FNC dropped 17%, to 2.934M viewers, though its No. 2 ranked status in that metric was same as in Debate 1. Fox News Channel’s Sunday debate numbers were up compared to Debate 2 of ’08.
