The Democrats’ effort to saturate the airwaves with its primetime January 6 show trial on Thursday yielded 19 million viewers across five networks — a preliminary figure that fell short of similar blanket-coverage political events, like this year’s State of the Union address, which drew 38 million viewers.
The figure beat the daytime broadcast of Robert Mueller’s Russia-collusion-hoax hearing by about 6 million viewers.
With almost non-stop hype leading up to Thursday’s primetime broadcasts, Democrats were hoping to bombard Americans with flashbacks to the January 6 Capitol Hill riot in an effort to distract them from the many failures of the Democrat-controlled White House and Congress.
January 6th Committee / YouTube
But the vast majority of Americans clearly had better things to do with their time than sit through a two-hour partisan lecture.
Preliminary Nielsen figures obtained by the New York Times showed that ABC drew the biggest audience with 4.8 million viewers, with NBC and CBS each attracting more than three million. Among the cable news networks, MSNBC drew an average audience of 4.2 million, while CNN drew 2.6 million.
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), (L) Chair of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, and Vice Chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) preside over a hearing on the January 6th investigation on June 09, 2022 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Fox News didn’t air the hearings in primetime and instead went with its usual lineup, which includes Tucker Carlson Tonight. During his show, Carlson blasted the Democrats’ hearing as pure propaganda.
The total of 19 million viewers is unimpressive when compared to other political events that receive blanket media coverage, like the State of the Union address and presidential debates.
Earlier this year, President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech attracted 38.2 million viewers. The first debate between then-President Donald Trump and Biden in 2020 drew more than 73 million viewers.
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