GOP Debate Attracts 24M On FNC

Fox News Channel’s primetime Republican Presidential Primary Debate captured 24 million viewers overall, making it the highest-rated non-sports cable telecast of all time, according to data from Nielsen. Last night’s debate was the highest-rated presidential primary debate ever, according to the Nielsen figures reported by Variety.

The debate, moderated by Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace, won 7.9 million viewers between 25 and 54, the demographic most desired by advertisers in news programming.
Thursday’s event, slated to run between 8:50 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET, more than doubled the network’s previous high of 11.8 million total viewers, earned during its coverage of the 2012 presidential election, Fox News said.

The earlier debate, moderated by Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum, averaged 6.1 million total viewers and 1.2 million viewers in the demo, Fox News said, making it the third-highest primary presidential debate ever for the network.

The debate was the number one event on Twitter last night, according to Nielsen Social TV ratings ranked, which measured  3.3 million tweets and 393 million impressions – more than were generated by the Jon Stewart’s farewell from “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central that aired just as the second debate wound down. FoxNews.com broke records as well, delivering more than 8 million video streams, in addition to more than 2.5 million simulcast video streams of the primetime debate.