18.8M watched first Jan. 6 hearing in prime time
Nearly 19 million television viewers watched the first prime-time hearing of the House select committee probing the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — a quantifiable success for the Democratic-led team of lawmakers who hoped their investigation would jolt the nation’s attention.
Ratings data released Friday indicated the hearing was watched by roughly 18.8 million people across the six major American broadcast and cable networks that aired the program live Thursday night. The preliminary data comes from the Nielsen ratings service and does not include the millions more who watched the hearing on streaming apps or social media, where many clips of testimony went viral.
The major broadcast networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — cleared their popular prime-time entertainment schedules to broadcast the hearing, without commercial interruption, from 8 to 10 p.m., Eastern time, as did cable news channels such as CNN and MSNBC.
ABC drew the biggest audience, nearly 4.9 million total viewers, followed by MSNBC, NBC and CBS and CNN.
The only major cable news outlet not to cover the hearing was Fox News, whose conservative opinion hosts pointedly attempted to counterprogram it — showing soundless glimpses of the hearing-room audience while they and their guests floridly disparaged the committee’s efforts. (“The dullest, the most boring, there’s absolutely nothing new, multihour Democratic fundraiser masquerading as a Jan. 6 hearing,” Fox host Sean Hannity declared.)
Instead, Fox dispatched two of its news anchors to host hearing coverage on much-less-watched sister channel Fox Business Network, where it drew 223,000 viewers as opposed to the 3 million who watched Fox News.
Viewers who tuned in to the hearing saw never-before-seen video footage of the day’s carnage, witness interviews conducted by the committee, and snippets of newsworthy audio from key players.
Certain moments from the hearing continued to generate headlines and attract eyeballs on Friday, such as recorded testimony of Ivanka Trump telling investigators that she didn’t believe the election was stolen.