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| Photo Credit: VOA |
Preliminary ratings figures from Nielsen reveals that almost 20 million people watched Thursday night’s first hearing of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 violent attack on the U.S Capitol across broadcast and cable news, The Hill reports.
The major broadcast television news networks ended regular scheduled programs on Thursday in favor
continuous live coverage of the two-hour hearings.A distribution of viewers reveals that ABC came first in
terms of viewership with about 4.8 million, closely followed by NBS at 3.5
million and CBS at 3.3 million.
ABC took the largest haul of viewers, earning 4.8 million of
them, while NBC and CBS carried 3.5 million and 3.3 million, respectively.
On Thursday night MSNBC pulled about 4.1 million viewers
during the hearings on cable while Fox News Channel came in second with an
average of 3 million viewers from 8 to 10 p.m., leaving CNN in third place with
2.6 million.
A large number of viewers watched the hearing via streaming
service online through YouTubeTV and other platforms.
President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address in March
pulled about 38 million viewers as opposed to about 9 million people who
watched former President Trump’s impeachment trial in 2020.