Trump gives a thumbs up for CNN time

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump thanked CNN on Tuesday for its Republican convention coverage, while Fox News heard complaints from some viewers that it wasn’t showing enough.

Trump tweeted he was “very appreciative” to CNN for showing the majority of the Republicans’ opening night program.

The numbers illustrate why he cares: 45 percent of people following coverage of the convention’s last hour on the top six networks Monday were watching Fox News Channel, the Nielsen company said.

Overall, 17 million people watched the final hour of convention coverage on all networks Monday, down from 19.7 million who saw Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s first night last week.

Fox’s audience was up 238 percent, but Democratic convention viewership beat Republicans on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC.

While MSNBC and CNN combined had just under 10 million viewers for Biden’s first night, they had 3.6 million for Trump, Nielsen said.

CNN and MSNBC showed nearly all of the Democrats’ prime-time program last week, and it was clear Monday that for consistency’s sake, they would try to do the same for Republicans.

Fox kept its prime-time opinion stars, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, on the air for the first hour and a half of the convention Monday.

Like Hannity did last week with the Democrats, they dipped in and out of showing what was going on at the convention.

But Fox didn’t show all of it. And the network had a lot more people watching Monday than the week before and a lot more people who cared about seeing what was going on with the Republicans than they did with Democrats.

A Fox representative said the network’s coverage plan for Republicans is the same as it was for the Democrats.