Nielsen: 48M Watched Trump Address

According to Nielsen, an estimated 48 million people tuned in to watch Donald Trump’s first address to a Joint Session of Congress (the traditional first-term equivalent of the State of the Union) in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2017.

While coverage varied by network, 11 aired live coverage from approximately 9:00 p.m. ET to 10:15 p.m. ET.

In terms of the social nature of the address, the most-Tweeted minute of the night was at 10:04 p.m. ET when 21,000 Twitter interactions occurred after the audience applauded the widow of a fallen Navy SEAL.

The chart below highlights the sum of the average audience for these networks.

Fox News was the most-watched on all of TV for the speech, drawing 10.765 million. According to TVNewser, NBC was second (first among the broadcasters) drawing 9.144 million. Among the younger news demo (A25-54) NBC was first, followed by Fox News. NBC had The Voice as its lead-in. As these are Nielsen numbers, this only includes TV viewing and not viewers who watched on streaming services.

9:15-10:15 p.m. ET | Total Viewers / A25-54 demo

Fox News: 10,765,000 / 2,784,000
NBC: 9,144,000 / 3,286,000
CBS: 7,156,000 / 1,897,000
ABC: 6,065,000 / 2,074,000
CNN: 3,944,000 / 1,517,000
FOX: 3,076,000 / 1,383,000
MSNBC: 2,683,000 / 669,000
FBN 593,000 / 118,000

By comparison, President Obama’s first address to a joint session of Congress on February 24, 2009 averaged 52.4 million viewers.