Over 20M watched Kavanaugh hearing

NEW YORK — More than 20 million people watched Thursday’s testimony by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the woman who accused him of a sexual assault that allegedly occurred in the 1980s, Christine Blasey Ford, on six television networks.

The political standoff continued, with broadcasters interrupting regular programming for Friday’s last-minute twist.

Ford told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she’s 100 percent certain that Kavanaugh groped her drunkenly and tried to take off her clothes at a high school party. Kavanaugh, in impassioned testimony, said he’s 100 percent certain that it didn’t happen.

It’s likely that more than the 20.4 million people reported by Nielsen on Friday watched it. The company was counting average viewership on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC. Figures weren’t immediately available for other networks that showed it, including PBS, C-SPAN and the Fox Business Network. And Nielsen usually has trouble measuring people who watch in offices.

To put that in perspective, that’s an audience size similar to that for a playoff football game or the Academy Awards.

Fox News Channel, whose opinion hosts have strongly backed Kavanaugh’s appointment, led all networks with an average of 5.69 million viewers during the all-day hearing, Nielsen said.

ABC was second with 3.26 million viewers. CBS had 3.1 million, NBC had 2.94 million, MSNBC had 2.89 million and CNN had 2.52 million, Nielsen said.