48 Million Viewers Watched Trump’s Address to Congress
48 Million Viewers Watched Trump’s Address to Congress
By JOHN KOBLIN
MARCH 1, 2017
President Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night drew an audience of about 47.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen data released Wednesday.
Mr. Trump’s speech — which was broadcast in prime time on all the major cable news channels and the four broadcast networks — had about 16.4 million more viewers than President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address last year. But it trailed the 52.4 million viewers that watched Mr. Obama’s first address to a joint session in 2009.
More than 20 percent of the total viewers for Tuesday’s address were watching Fox News, which had 10.4 million viewers between 9 p.m. and 10:15 p.m.
NBC led the broadcast networks with roughly nine million viewers. The network probably benefited from its 8 p.m. lead-in, the return of “The Voice,” which was the No. 1 broadcast network show of the night, with more than 11 million viewers.
Among the cable channels, MSNBC had the smallest audience, with 2.6 million viewers, compared with CNN’s 3.8 million. Univision had 3.4 million viewers, 2 percent more than for Mr. Obama’s 2009 address.
The viewership for Mr. Trump’s address was much larger than the audience for his inauguration, which drew about 31 million viewers. The figures from the inauguration and Tuesday’s address do not include streaming data.
Mr. Trump’s viewership was higher than President George W. Bush’s first address, which had 40 million viewers.
The two most-viewed speeches — either State of the Unions or other addresses to joint sessions of Congress — were President Bill Clinton’s first to a joint session in 1993, with 66.9 million viewers, and Mr. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union, which occurred a few weeks before the Iraq war and drew 62 million viewers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/b...-congress.html
