Trump convention speech draws 32.2 million TV viewers

Elizabeth Warren even compared Trump to a “two-bit dictator” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, but according to a CNN/ORC Instant Poll, 56 percent of voters say they are more likely to vote for The Donald after watching his speech. But in an environment where he wasn’t sparring with other candidates – one where it was just Trump, in the limelight – the real estate developer didn’t seem to be much of a draw.

Thursday’s audience topped the 30.3 million who watched nominee Mitt Romney’s 2012 speech but fell well short of John McCain’s audience of 38.9 million at the 2008 Republican convention. Nielsen’s measurements only count traditional TV.

The ratings for this week’s convention “did not live up to the hype”, The New York Times concluded on Friday.

Among the broadcast networks, NBC had the biggest audience during Trump’s speech.

Fox averaged 9.3 million viewers between 10 and 11:45 p.m., when all the major channels carried the convention live.

CNN averaged 5.5 million.

In cable prime time, from 8 to 11 p.m., Fox News averaged 7.2 million viewers to CNN’s 4.3 million and MSNBC’s 2.4 million. From the last night of the 2012 GOP convention, CNN was up 161 percent in total viewers and 137 percent in the 25-to-54 age group, which is most important to news advertisers. And NBC was third overall with 4.6 million.

PBS, the non-commercial Public Broadcasting Service, drew 1.9 million viewers. Compare that with the worst night for viewership in 2016, January 11 – it still managed to attract 11.1 million viewers, almost 3 million more than the best night in 2012.

What’s known as the “gap” between the two channels has tightened considerably, although Fox remains in first place.