The maximum number of viewers watching the RNC at any given time (also known as peak concurrents) was 217,000 (during Donald Trump’s Thursday speech), while the peak concurrents for the DNC was 250,000 (during Hillary Clinton’s Thursday evening speech). While the 2016 DNC topped its RNC competitor, it did not out-rate the second night of the 2012 DNC, which garnered 25.12 million viewers. The first three days of the RNC were watched by 23 million, 23 million, and 19.8 million people, respectively.
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Contrast this with how disorganized the RNC was, with one night ending early and with Trump himself calling into The O’Reilly Factor, and when a Benghazi victim’s mother was holding Clinton responsible for her son’s death.
Fox News slipped to a not-unexpected last place in terms of DNC coverage, with 2.85 million total viewers and 634,000 in the 25-54 demo.
On Thursday morning, Trump’s campaign sent a fundraising email urging supporters not to tune into Clinton’s acceptance speech.
Monday night’s speeches were seen by 26 million viewers across seven channels, versus 23 million for night one of the RNC. Trump’s keynote, delivered on July 21 in Cleveland, received 34.9 million viewers across the same networks, besting Clinton’s total by about 5%.
“Unless you want to be lied to, belittled, and attacked for your beliefs, don’t watch Hillary’s DNC speech tonight”, the email read. The two events were viewed live on YouTube over 9 million times, with viewers tuning in for 25 minutes on average (impressive, given our shortening attention spans).
And during Trump’s big Terrorchella last week, the vaguely human-ish reality TV personality tweeted his pleasure with his convention’s ratings.
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On Tuesday night, the three cable news channels and the three major broadcast networks drew a combined average audience of 24.7 million from 10-11:15 p.m.
