TV Ratings: 20M Tune-In For Prime-Time Congressional Hearing

An estimated 20 million people tuned in to live U.S. television broadcasts of Thursday's hearing by lawmakers probing the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, reports Reuters citing the Nielsen ratings.

The viewership across 12 networks ranked below other political events such as President Biden's State of the Union address, which pulled in 38 million viewers in March, but higher than most congressional hearings.

The first televised hearing of the impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Donald Trump, for example, attracted about 14 million viewers on 10 networks in 2019. It was held during the day, when TV viewership is lower.

The committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by Trump supporters is holding rare primetime hearings to spotlight the findings of its nearly year-long investigation. Broadcasters including ABC, CBS and NBC interrupted regular programming to show the event.

Nielsen's figures included people who watched via traditional television or streamed through Internet-connected TVs, but they do not capture the full extent of online viewing via social media.

The tally also does not include Fox News Channel, which opted to run its regular opinion programming during the hearing. Fox Business Network covered the hearing live.

Of the 20 million viewers, 15.2 million were age 55 and older, Nielsen said. Less than 1 million people age 18 to 34 watched via the TV networks.

TV Newser reports MSNBC was the most-watched cable network and the second-most-watched network overall, averaging more than 4.3 million total viewers. CNN averaged more adults 25-54 than the cable competition, 747,000. Fox News was the only major network that declined to carry the entirety of the hearing live, instead sticking with regular primetime programming and occasionally showing the hearing in a split-screen. The network averaged 3.5 million viewers and 546,000 adults 25-54 from 8-10 p.m., which is pretty consistent with what the network typically draws on Thursday in that time period. Fox News drew a larger total audience than CNN, but fewer adults 25-54 than CNN and MSNBC.

Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum covered the hearings live on Fox Business Network. Their coverage attracted 223,000 viewers – roughly double the audience for a typical FBN program, but a significantly smaller audience than what the respective hosts draw on Fox News. Other Nielsen-measured cable networks that carried the primetime hearing live were CNBC, Newsmax, CNNe, NewsNation and NBC LX. Those networks totaled roughly 600,000 total viewers.