Last night, a desperate cable channel called CNN, hand-picked and filmed a Trump rally that they billed as a Presidential Town Hall and you would think from the social media and legacy media buzz that the candidate’s collective clan generated, that this was a ratings phenomenon.
Exhibit A, The Hollywood Reporter:
TV Ratings: CNN Gets Big Boost With Trump Town Hall
Though widely criticized, the telecast draws the network's largest primetime audience in months.
The 3.31 million viewers on Wednesday is the second largest audience for any single-candidate town hall on CNN since 2016.
Well if this is the second biggest and is getting all this hype, who was the biggest, O same article in the Hollywood Reporter, proclaiming a big boost for CNN?
...an April 2020 sit-down with Joe Biden drew 3.47 million viewers
I’m sorry.
Could you repeat that because I wasn’t able to hear it over your headline.
...an April 2020 sit-down with Joe Biden drew 3.47 million viewers
So in 2023, the former guy is second best to Biden… from three years ago?
Whoa.
What a juggernaut this former guy is. He’s insurmountable!
Except he’s surmountable for President Biden.
Biden draws higher ratings than Trump in dueling town halls
BY SOPHIE LEWIS
OCTOBER 16, 2020 / 8:13 PM / CBS NEWS
Former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump went head-to-head Thursday night with dueling town halls. More Americans watched Biden on ABC than Trump on NBC, MSNBC and CNBC combined, according to Nielsen.
Biden's town hall brought in 14.14 million viewers on ABC, while Mr. Trump, who is known for bragging about his high television ratings, brought in a total of about 13.46 million across the three networks.
So let’s dig even deeper into these supposedly amazing ratings for the former guy, that supposedly justified CNN’s gambit on his hate and lie fest.
Trump Ratings Bombshell: CNN's Town Hall With Ex-Prez Unable to Defeat Rival Network Fox News
CNN's town hall with ex-president Donald Trump may have taken over the Twittersphere, but Neilsen ratings showed the network came in third with total day viewers and was unable to dethrone its rival Fox News.
RadarOnline.com has obtained the final ratings, which included out-of-home viewers, revealing that FNC took the top spot on Wednesday while defeating MSNBC in primetime across the board.
Trump's town hall garnered 3.3 million total viewers and 781k in the prized A25-54 demographic, lower than five Fox News Channel Town Halls with the GOP frontrunner.CNN's highest-rated town hall was with President Biden in February 2021.
The network did get a surge in ratings during the Trump town hall held in New Hampshire that was moderated by Kaitlan Collins, with the network raving over it bringing in its best numbers since the final Jan. 6 hearings, which aired in July 2022.
Viewers tuned out of CNN after the town hall, leading the ratings to drop to 2.2 million viewers in the 9 PM/ET hour and 1.2 million for the 10 PM/ET hour, allowing Fox News Channel's The Ingraham Angle to slide past CNN by 45 percent with total viewership.