Testimony from Comey was rare D.C. blockbuster
The Senate testimony of fired FBI Director James Comey may not have provided a blockbuster moment into the investigation of Russian influence in the
2016 presidential election, but it did produce a rarity: With 19.5 million viewers, it was a megahit for daytime
TV ratings, falling just short of the 20 million viewers for Game 3 of the NBA Finals.
Granted, #ComeyDay, as it was dubbed on Twitter, was shown across 10 networks and cable stations simultaneously Thursday, and Wednesday’s Game 3 was broadcast on just one, ABC. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that a congressional hearing became a pop culture phenomenon.
Millions more who weren’t near a TV
— or in one of the bars where TVs were tuned to the proceedings — watched Comey and the Senate Intelligence Committee on cell phones, tablets and computers.
It was another sign that more people are tuning to politics not just because it is where decisions that affect all of us are made, but also because it “has become another entertainment option,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for market research firm comScore.
“These hearings are the blockbuster movie of the television world right now,” said Dergarabedian. “Everyone is talking about it.”
In the hours after Thursday’s hearing, the top four stories on Entertainment Weekly’s home page were Comey-related. Editor in Chief Henry Goldblatt said that while the magazine doesn’t focus on politics, “our job is to cover what’s going on in popular culture. There was no bigger thing this past week than the Comey hearing.”
It’s a new world, where politics and entertainment continually collide. And in that world, nothing draws an audience like President Trump and every step he takes.
“It’s a continuation of what went on around the campaign,” Goldblatt said. “Whatever your feelings are about Donald Trump, he’s an entertainer and a storyteller.”
During his shockingly successful run for president, Trump was as much showman as candidate, using his celebrity — much of it drawn from the popular reality TV show “The Apprentice” — to draw huge crowds to his raucous rallies, where they cheered his larger-than-life persona as much as his political plans and views.
And lately, the president, whose administration has been dogged by political blun-
ders and strategic miscalculations since day 1, has been willing to test the old showbiz adage that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
The steady drip, drip, drip of media stories and revelations about the FBI’s investigation into purported ties between Trump’s staff and Russian meddling in the 2016 election has sent the president’s popularity plunging. But at the same time, the political carnival that is Washington right now makes for compelling entertainment.
The president’s media platform of choice is Twitter, where it’s a safe bet that plenty of the 32 million followers of @realDonaldTrump are there as much for the entertainment value of the president’s angry zingers as for whatever policy plans Trump can pack into 140 characters.
When it comes to a question of politics or entertainment
for the millions who followed the Comey hearing online, “it’s a little bit of both,” said Nick Cicero, CEO of Delmondo, a social video analytics company. “They’re watching a news story, but there’s also the circus element there, too.”
Thursday’s Senate hearing provided plenty of grist for Trump’s foes and supporters, but it also was the type of seldom-in-a-lifetime event that pulled in nonpolitical viewers who just wanted to be able to say they saw it, Cicero said. Even those who typically don’t give much thought to politics probably understood the significance of the event, he added.
While the Kefauver Organized Crime hearings in 195051, the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, the Watergate hearings in 1973, the IranContra hearings in 1987, the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991 and the Clinton impeachment hearings in 1998 all received wall-to-wall television coverage, the explosion of the Internet and online video provides more
ways to watch. That means the possibility not only of a far larger audience, but also of attracting viewers less interested in the politics at hand than in the event itself.
“The politics is important, but there’s also the element of history, the chance for people to be part of an event that’s happening right now,” Cicero said.
Many of the tweets sent out during the 2½-hour Comey hearing seemed better suited to a ball game than to a moment of American political history.
Even Goldblatt, the Entertainment Weekly editor, got caught up in the spectacle Thursday, tweeting that California Sen. Kamala Harris “is my new favorite superhero.”
That said, Goldblatt doesn’t expect the magazine to cover the intense but incremental follow-up to the hearing. That type of content doesn’t do as well among people who aren’t political junkies, analysts said.
“If it’s business-as-usual and there’s sameness to the news, no,” Dergarabedian said. “But when it’s every day there’s a bombshell, a revelation, a hearing — that’s when people are tuning in.”
Analysts don’t see evidence that this new audience is migrating from other entertainment options. While the Memorial Day movie box office take was the lowest in nearly two decades, it wasn’t because people were staying home watching MSNBC, CNN and Fox.
Instead, Dergarabedian said, “they’re working (political coverage) into their schedule.”
“Whoever has the biggest hammer wins,” Dergarabedian said. “Whoever has the most compelling content wins.”
On Thursday, James Comey was that content.