CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — President Trump, a former reality TV star, likes to tout his ability to pull an audience. But his appearances during the 2020 Republican National Convention’s first night didn’t help his party outperform Democrats, at least by that metric.
Roughly 15.8 million people turned on their TVs between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Monday to watch the Republican convention’s opening night, according to early Nielsen Media Research data.
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A week ago, preliminary Nielsen numbers found 18.7 million people tuned into the Democratic convention via ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC between 10 p.m. and 11:15 p.m. The Democrats’ four-day program, culminating in Joe Biden accepting the party’s 2020 presidential nominee, included former first lady Michelle Obama last Monday. Her figures were later revised to 19.7 million viewers.
The Biden campaign talked up how an additional 10.2 million people watched last Monday’s speaker line-up online. Trump’s team spent Tuesday morning promoting how six times the viewers watched Monday’s schedule on C-SPAN than the Democratic edition, before releasing their own statistics.
“Night 1 viewership of #RNC2020 blew Democrats out of the water! 39.1M viewers across TV & digital (10M more than Dems). Includes TV, news outlet livestreams & organic campaign livestreams. It does not include paid media,” they tweeted.
Night 1 viewership of #RNC2020 blew Democrats out of the water!
39.1M viewers across TV & digital (10M more than Dems).
Includes TV, news outlet livestreams & organic campaign livestreams. It does not include paid media.
Enthusiasm is on our side & we are just getting started!
— Team Trump (Text VOTE to 88022) (@TeamTrump) August 25, 2020
Biden set last week’s ratings high watermark, attracting 24.6 million people on Thursday. The two-term vice president beat former President Barack Obama and 2020 running mate Kamala Harris. The pair drew 22.8 million viewers the previous night.
Republican convention viewership continues a downward trend as the confabs become more preordained and TV audiences further fragment thanks to an increase in streaming options. Trump, for instance, brought in 32.2 million people in 2016, compared to Hillary Clinton’s 30 million.
The networks on Monday all covered the convention differently, however, their approaches also diverged from last week. Fox mostly stuck to its original programming, airing specific speeches. CNN and MSNBC carried large swathes of the content, breaking in for ads and commentary.
Trump had already griped Monday about the networks’ coverage of his roll-call vote during the in-person portion of the convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“I turned to CNN and they didn’t have this, they weren’t having it. Can you believe it? They didn’t have it. No, no, CNN didn’t have the roll call,” he told attendees.
