An average of 32.2 million viewers watched the final night of coverage of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, according to final Nielsen data on 10 commercial broadcast and cable networks. But it was below the 38.9 million viewers for John McCain in 2008.
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Fox News Channel, which saw the resignation of longtime Chief Executive Roger Ailes late Thursday afternoon, averaged 7.18 million viewers in prime time, up 9 percent from 2012.
Fox News once again ran away from the competition on the final night of the Republican National Convention. CNN and particularly Fox News have been getting very strong showings from the GOP event, so the addition of those numbers will greatly help Trump’s quest for ratings gold.
For the closing hour of the four-day convention, CNN drew 5.5 million viewers; NBC 4.6 million; ABC 3.9 million; CBS 3.8 million and MSNBC 3 million. CBS News took 3.4 million viewers.
To prove to be a bigger draw than RNC headliners of the recent past, Trump’s final tally would need to be higher than 30.3 million to top Mitt Romney in 2012.
Fox also led in the 25-54 demographic, with 2.48 million viewers, up 53 percent from 2012.
Prior to Thursday, the 2016 RNC had been averaging 22 million viewers across eight ad-supported networks. CNN and MSNBC also posting record gains. Last night was the second-highest-rated night for the network in the news demo.
CNN posted its best-ever results for any GOP convention, besting its 4.1 million mark in for day two of the 2008 event.
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During the final night of the RNC in 2012, between 8 and 11 p.m., CNN averaged 581,000 viewers in the “demo”, and this year it had nearly 1.4 million.
