19M+ Watch First Night of January 6 Attack Hearings

[PGage]

I wish I had thought to ask this in advance, but I am interested in if folks here think this is a high, low or expected number of viewers for last night. For context, 19 M is less than the State of the Union (38M) and about the same as Sunday Night Football, which is the highest rated regular TV program.

I got home at 6:25 from work, and watched the recording I had kind of randomly made from NBC News. The NYT reports the following breakdown:

ABC: 4.8 M

NBC: 3M+

CBS: 3M+

MSNBC: 4.2M (4X their normal audience)

CNN: 2.6M

Fox “News” got its usual 3M viewers, so I guess that really does mean that almost no regular FN viewer watched the Hearing. 

I watched the events of 1/6/21 live in horror and often literally in tears. I dug in pretty deeply over the weeks that followed on any available information, and I feel like about 90% of what the Committee is reporting was known before the end of January last year. Still, I have been impressed with the work of the Committee, and thought they did an effective job last night, consistent with finding that most people who tuned in at the start stayed with the whole two hours.

I can also report the unsurprising news that Chuck Todd continues to be an incompetent twit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/10/business/media/jan-6-hearing-ratings.html?referringSource=articleShare

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[Tom Wolper]

Summer TV numbers have always been relatively low and more and more people don’t think of the networks when they choose what to watch in the evening (Eastern time zone).

For me the purpose of the hearings is to get all of this information and evidence into the public record in the most accessible way and to make the DOJ more aggressive in prosecuting those responsible. Neither of those requires big ratings.

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[Kevin M.]

Well, the ratings numbers are still coming from Nielsen, which the industry has rejected as inaccurate but has yet to replace with a new independent system. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[PGage]

Agreed. The Hearings are not a TV show and are not primarily evaluated in terms of ratings. 

But the ratings, albeit imperfectly, are an indication of public interest. My take is that, contrary to the claims of Trump collaborators that the American people no longer care about the 1/6 Attack, the ratings, at least on the first night, indicate a high level of interest; Americans were at least as interested in learning more about the Attacks as they are in watching prime time football.

I feel like the Hearing over performed reasonable expectations in the ratings, and in substance. 

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[Mark Jeffries]

Just wait until Monday, when the dwindling audience ready to watch their "stories" see the hearings instead.

 

Mark Jeffries
spotl...@gmail.com

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[Brad Beam]

C-Span only shows a two-hour block for the hearings on Monday morning (10a-12p ET).

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 11, 2022, at 17:48, Mark Jeffries <spotl...@gmail.com> wrote:



[Tom Wolper]

I agree with that. I just don’t want to set up a comparison to earlier televised Congressional hearings because of the fracturing of the audience and the fact that people know they can quickly get recaps instead of sitting through the hearings.

The first televised hearings in the fifties, the Kefauver organized crime hearings and the Army McCarthy hearings, were apparently blockbusters. The Watergate hearings, as I recall, didn’t become compelling until it came out that Nixon was recording Oval Office conversations. I can’t comment about Iran Contra because I wasn’t in the US at the time.

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[PGage]

Right, comparisons to past Hearings are not valid, for same reason not really helpful to compare Oscar ratings this year to 30 years ago. I think it helps to compare to most recent big audience political event, and most popular regular TV program.

I stayed home from school to watch the Wategate hearings, even before Alex Butterrfield (? That’s from memory, I think it was his name) revealed the tapes. I was on my Honeymoon when Oliver North was testifying in Iran-Contra, and am happy to report that I was otherwise engaged.

I would be interested in seeing Ratings for those Hearings compared to the State of The Union speech that year, and the most popular regular show.

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[Kevin M.]

On Sat, Jun 11, 2022 at 4:49 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:

Right, comparisons to past Hearings are not valid, for same reason not really helpful to compare Oscar ratings this year to 30 years ago. I think it helps to compare to most recent big audience political event, and most popular regular TV program.

I stayed home from school to watch the Wategate hearings, even before Alex Butterrfield (? That’s from memory, I think it was his name) revealed the tapes. I was on my Honeymoon when Oliver North was testifying in Iran-Contra, and am happy to report that I was otherwise engaged.

I was a kid in Oklahoma at a KOA campground run by my sister’s godparents during Iran-Contra. As a child I found Oklahoma so boring that I watched nearly every minute of Oliver North. I also discovered Le Tour De France on TV that year. That boring summer shaped my viewing habits and my politics. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[PGage]

I may have enjoyed that summer more than you did…

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[Kevin M.]

On Sat, Jun 11, 2022 at 6:38 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:

I may have enjoyed that summer more than you did…

I would hope so 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)