CNN’s Trump Town Hall Brings Big Ratings Boost For Network, Which Doubles Fox and MSNBC

CNN’s town hall with 2024 GOP frontrunner Donald Trump landed atop the cable news ratings at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, beating both Fox News and MSNBC during the time slot.

Nielsen Fast National data showed CNN scoring 3.12 million total viewers and a whopping 703,000 viewers in the key 25-54 age demographic. Notably, early data does not reflect the town hall’s full viewership as later numbers will; both CNN.com and CNN’s apps aired the town hall live as well, numbers which will be released later in the day.

The event at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, hosted by CNN host Kaitlan Collins, immediately became a lightning rod of controversy as critics — even inside CNN’s own house — denounced the event as a “spectacle of lies.” Many on the right, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), celebrated Trump’s performance. Greene tweeted that she and the former president “laughed and laughed” regarding his ability to platform his widely debunked 2020 election claims on the network.

Update: Final numbers placed CNN in first at 8 p.m. with 3.31 million viewers, MSNBC in second with 1.36 million, and Fox in third with 1.35 million total viewers. CNN won the demo with 781,000 viewers, beating Fox’s 190,000 and CNN’s 171,000.

CNN’s prime time average in recent weeks has hovered around half a million viewers, landing in third place behind Fox and MSNBC.

For context, Fox’s last six Trump town hall events outperformed CNN delivering 5.1 million, 4.4 million, 4.2 million, 3.8 million, 3.5 million, and 3.2 million — with Sean Hannity’s June 2020 event leading the way.

CNN’s winning of the time slot is reminiscent of 2016 when Trump converge at the time helped to bolster CNN’s ratings. “With CNN’s debates and heavy coverage of Mr. Trump, the network’s ratings have increased about 170 percent in prime time this year,” wrote New York Times media reporter Jim Rutenberg in March of 2016.

CNN’s president at the time Jeff Zucker told Rutenberg, “These numbers are crazy — crazy.” Zucker later publicly said he regretted CNN’s obsessive coverage of Trump during the period.

“How crazy? Two-hundred-thousand-dollars-per-30-second-spot crazy on debate nights, 40 times what CNN makes on an average night, according to Advertising Age. That’s found money,” Rutenberg concluded at the time.

The numbers for CNN’s latest town hall aren’t necessarily crazy. Sure, they doubled the competition and beat CNN’s usual numbers by millions, but 3 million viewers is what Fox News used to draw on a regular night.

This story has been updated.

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