Billionaire Donald Trump’s blunt speaking style has boosted interest in the contest to pick a Republican presidential nominee for the November 2016 election.
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In an exclusive interview, the 16th Republican presidential candidate said he could have added to the debate, particularly on the economy and foreign policy. The previous high was the 16.8 million people who watched a “Larry King Live” episode in 1993 with Vice-President Al Gore and Ross Perot.
Wednesday’s matchup easily surpassed that total. “Talent” was No. 2 in prime time. Fox News’ early debate last month drew 6.1 million.
What accounts for the difference?
The image of Republicans squabbling only serves to give liberals in the media like Chris Matthews-who has referred to the GOP field as a “clown car”-more confidence that the Democrats will win the presidency next year despite the numerous scandals surrounding front-runner Hillary Clinton”. That’s because the ratings are an average of minute-by-minute viewership, so if viewers didn’t stay for the whole program, the average will be lower. Yahoo’s Ken Tucker said “as programming scheduled by a news channel with the announced intent of enlightening the public-the CNN debate was a mess at once hectic and tedious”.
Sam Feist, CNN’s Washington bureau chief, said there are 13 cameras set up inside the library.
Then the audience really surged. After Trump’s comments, and Fiorina’s super PAC response, the prospect of the two candidates facing off on stage has become highly anticipated. It’s all slated to wrap up at around 11 p.m. EDT.
When it comes to the Internet streaming of debates, there is also a more practical concern: overloaded servers. At 9:45 pm, usage peaked at 921,000 concurrent live streams.
The ratings show that these GOP debates are drawing viewers who’ve never bothered turning on a debate before – largely due to Trump’s presence.
Final ratings for the debate will be available later on Thursday. Four of the first five questions were either addressed to Trump or were about him and things that he has said. Europe’s Sky News covered the event on their YouTube channel, but Fox News quickly shut it down citing copyright laws, despite the fact that both are owned by 21 Century Fox. It looks like the debate will be the most-watched event in the network’s history, meaning that, no matter how it went, the suits will be ecstatic.
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And as the debate continued, the man started to trend across the world wide web, with users celebrating just how good looking the man was.
