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Saturday, July 13, 2024

'Big Boy' Press Conference Draws Over 24M Viewers


Around 24.2 million people watched President Joe Biden‘s news conference at NATO Summit on Thursday, according to Variety citing Nielsen data. That’s up from the 20.3 million people who watched President Biden address the nation on October 19 in regards to the Israel and Ukraine wars, and it’s hovering in State of the Union address territory, as interest continues to be pronounced when it comes to President Biden’s physical state and performance.

FOX News Channel’s (FNC) coverage on Thursday, July 11 was the highest-rated program in television from 7:30-8:30 PM/ET, averaging 5.7 million viewers and 835,000 in the 25-54 demo, according to data from Nielsen Media Research. In addition to topping cable news, FNC outpaced broadcast and all cable networks, including ABC, CBS and NBC, among others. Additionally, FNC solely held the largest share of the cable news audience (25%) throughout President Biden’s press conference.

In primetime, from 8-11 PM/ET, FNC drew in 4.2 million viewers and 597,000 in the 25-54 demo, easily outpacing CNN and MSNBC combined. During total day, FNC also outpaced all networks, averaging 2 million viewers and 256,000 in the younger 25-54 demo.

 Most of that viewership was in the 55+ demo, where 19.2 million viewers watched live. Among adults 18-34, the number was just over 1 million, while it was 3.6 million with adults 35 to 54.


Presidential press conferences rarely reach mega-ratings. A good comparison might be the annual State of the Union address, which this year averaged 32.2 million people. That was up from 2023’s 27.3 million and 2021’s 26.9 million viewers. In 2022, about 38.2 million watched Biden’s State of the Union — just days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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