Fox News Channel clobbered the competition, cable and broadcast, on Donald Trump’s inauguration day, clocking nearly 11.8M viewers from noon to 12:30 PM ET during Trump’s swearing in and Inaugural Address, as well as 8.4M viewers from 10 AM to 6 PM ET when most of the action occurred, and 7M total viewers in primetime on January 20.
Starting with that tighter noon-12:30 PM half hour, CNN trailed FNC with 3.4M viewers, while MSNBC nabbed 1.5M. FNC also outstripped its cable news competitors in the news demographic: 3M 25-54 year old viewers chose FNC, to CNN’s 1.2M and 315K who went with MSNBC.
In primetime, FNC’s 7M outstripped combined CNN (4.5M) and MSNBC (1.6M). In the demo, FNC’s 1.8M viewers outpaced CNN’s 1.4M as well as MSNBC’s 395K.
Between 10 AM and 6 PM Friday, Fox News Channel averaged 8.4M viewers and 2.1M news-demo viewers. CNN came in second among cablers, with 4.5M viewers and 872K news demo watchers. MSNBC averaged 1.4M total viewers and 302K news-demo viewers.
Fox News Channel also trounced broadcasters in that same block of time. From 10 AM to 5:45 PM, NBC News, which led the broadcast pack, averaged 5.8 million total viewers. ABC logged 4.9M viewers. And CNN was nipping at the heels of CBS, which averaged 4.6M. FNC also beat broadcasters in the news demo. Its 2.1M outdistanced NBC’s broadcast-leading 1.9M, as well as ABC’s 1.4M and CBS’s 1.2M.
FNC also had been network of choice for Trump supporters on the eve of his inauguration, a day that included the Trump family’s arrival in Washington and an Inaugural Welcome Concert.
FNC snagged 4.8M primetime viewers that day – its biggest primetime haul since the night after the nailbiter election night. FNC’s tally was bigger than CNN (1.462 and MSNBC (1.538M) combined. In the news demo, FNC’s 1.079M also outstripped combined CNN (502K) and MSNBC (334K).
Earlier in the day on Inauguration Eve, 4-7 PM, FNC accounted for 4.5M of the 6.6M who’d watched, via cable news, the concert headlined by Toby Keith, Lee Greenwood, Piano Guys and 3 Doors Down.
