A GOP primary debate hosted by Fox News Thursday evening drew an astounding 12.5 million viewers, making it the second most-watched event in the network’s entire history, the group announced Friday.
And it happened despite that the GOP front-runner, Donald Trump refused to participate.
Trump boycotted the event after the network released a press statement this week mocking him as petulant and thin-skinned. He had been flirting with the idea of skipping the debate over the network’s decision to include Megyn Kelly as a moderator, and the tone of the sarcastic press release reportedly pushed him to make a decision.
The casino tycoon scheduled a counter-event at the same time as the Fox debate, but it doesn’t appear to have done much to the network’s ratings.
“The debate topped all television shows — including broadcast programs — on Thursday night in total viewers. It also pulled in 3.5 million viewers in the advertiser-friendly demo of adults aged 25-54,” Fox reported, citing Nielsen numbers. “The debate beat CNN and MSNBC combined in both total viewers and the 25-54 demo.”
“The combined Fox News event was also a driving force online and across social media. Nielsen Social TV ratings ranked the debate as the number one event on Twitter Thursday night with 1.073 million tweets and 162 million impressions, beating ‘American Idol’ and WWE,” the report added.
Thursday’s ratings were better than previous debates, including one hosted by Fox Business earlier in January. CNN and MSNBC both carried much of Trump’s counter-rally, but they came nowhere close in terms of matching Fox’s ratings.
But Trump maintains that the debate would’ve been a much bigger television event were he present.
“They say that if I participated in last night’s Fox debate, they would have had 12 million more & would have broken the all time record,” Trump said on social media, citing unnamed sources.
