Here's How Many People Watched The 2024 Presidential Debate And How Fox Beat CNN At Its Own Game

Cable network CNN hosted the first 2024 presidential debate and, like Donald Trump, could possibly be seen as a winner from Thursday night's key political event.

And while CNN may have won, another media company may have been a bigger winner from the debate.

What Happened: Millions of viewers tuned into the first presidential debate, which featured Trump and President Joe Biden in a head-to-head matchup ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

CNN, which is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery WBD, hosted the debate and allowed other media companies to simulcast the 90-minute event, which featured two commercial breaks.

According to CNN, 47.9 million viewers watched Thursday's debate, based on preliminary estimates from Nielsen. CNN offered a live feed of the debate free of charge but with several rules related to presentation and branding, with 22 networks agreeing to simulcast.

Here are the viewership figures by network, as reported by Axios:

Fox News: 8.82 million

CNN: 8.75 million

ABC: 8.70 million

NBC: 5.17 million

CBS: 4.81 million

MSNBC: 3.94 million

FOX: 3.48 million

Fox Business: 372,000

HLN: 251,000

CNN Espanol: 46,000

Fox News, which is a unit of Fox Corporation FOXFOXA, ranked first in the preliminary ratings. While the ratings may change, the fact that Fox beat or had close to the same viewership as CNN may be a testament to the strong political viewership of Fox News.

Fox also dominated overall with Fox News ranking first and Fox and Fox Business also ranking in the top 10. Together, the three networks had over 12 million viewers compared to the more than 9 million viewers for CNN, CNN-owned HLN and CNN Espanol.

Fox News also ranked first in coverage of both presidential debates in the 2020 election, which were not hosted by any individual network and were broadcast widely.

Other media companies like Walt Disney Company DIS-owned ABC and Paramount Global PARAPARAA-owned CBS also saw strong viewership.

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Why It's Important: CNN broke several records with its hosted presidential debate, including being the most watched event in CNN history and the most watched CNN program on the Max streaming platform.

CNN also had over 30 million views on its digital platforms, including its YouTube channel.

The presidential debate is also the most watched non-sports television event of 2024 so far, when total viewership is counted.

Viewership of the first 2024 presidential debate was down significantly from the last two presidential elections. The first presidential debate between Trump and Biden in 2020 was watched by 73 million people and the first presidential debate of 2016 between Hillary Clinton and Trump was watched by a record 84 million viewers.

The first debate of 2024 was watched by 35% less people than the first debate of 2020.

Attention now turns to a second presidential debate set for Sept. 10 and will be hosted by ABC. The event will be broadcast on ABC, ANBC News and Hulu, with plans to simulcast to other networks as well.

The second debate of the 2020 presidential election was watched by 63 million viewers. Based on the overall reaction to Thursday's debate, even fewer people could tune in a second time around.

Debates could be good for media companies and the continued political cycle will likely lead to higher advertising revenue for the companies. Lower viewership from the 2020 cycle and lower demand for a second debate could be items to watch going forward.

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