CNN
CNN’s town hall with ex-President Donald Trump delivered strong ratings — but not as strong as President Joe Biden’s past CNN town halls — or Trump’s own past Fox News events.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins moderated a CNN town hall at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire Wednesday night that devolved into a chaotic spectacle of attacks, falsehoods, and abuse that sparked a barrage of criticism and recriminations at the network.
And Trump’s four solid minutes of verbal assault on E. Jean Carroll — whom a jury says Trump sexually abused — prompted Carroll to say she may sue Trump again.
But his advisers were delighted with the performance, and the famously ratings-obsessed Trump boasted about the viewing audience for the event, which did deliver double the viewers of competitors Fox News and MSNBC and quintupled CNN’s average audience in the time slot.
Trump might not be inclined to brag, however, about how his performance stacked up against past town halls, his own and Biden’s.
CNN’s ratings memo on the event noted that the total audience of 3.308 million for the town hall “ranked 2nd among total viewers, closely behind CNN’s 2020 Joe Biden Town Hall (9/17/20, 7:59p-9:15p; 3.465 million)” for single-candidate events since 2016. Trump’s did edge Biden out in the demo.
And according to Nielsen data compiled by Fox News, Trump’s CNN town hall couldn’t compete with the audiences for half-a-dozen of his own past Fox News events:
CNN’s The Trump Town Hall delivered 3.1 million total viewers and 703,000 A25-54, lower than six FOX News Channel Town Halls with former President Trump which delivered 5.1 million P2+, 4.4 million P2+, 4.2 million P2+, 3.8 million P2+, 3.5 million P2+ and 3.2 million P2+. Notably Sean Hannity’s town hall on June 25th, 2020 was the highest-rated.
CNN’s highest rated town hall was with President Biden and delivered 3.7 million P2+ and 912,000 A25-54 on 2/16/21.
Following the town hall at 8 PM/ET, viewers departed CNN, dropping to 2.3 million viewers in the 9 PM/ET hour and 1.2 million for the 10 PM/ET hour, losing to FOX News Channel’s The Ingraham Angle by 46% with total viewership. FNC easily won the 11pm hour with P2+ and A25-54.
The CNN memo did note that their town hall “delivered a larger demo audience than Trump’s first town hall of the 2020 election cycle on Fox News, drawing +5% more adults 25-54 (781k vs. 744k),” and that “the event was significantly ahead of Trump’s last town hall appearance on CNN in 2016 (aired 4/12/16, 9p-10:05p), delivering +53% more total viewers (3.308m vs. 2.168m) and +35% more in the demo (781k vs. 579k).”
Have a tip for us? tips@mediaite.com
