Fox News’s Thursday evening special, “DeSantis vs. Newsom: The Great Pink vs. Blue State Debate,” introduced in a whopping four.75 million average viewers.

The ninety-minute debate between GOP presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) was moderated by means of Sean Hannity and was once Hannity’s easiest-rated telecast of the 12 months. The controversy greater than doubled Hannity’s average scores of 2.25 million in November.

Hannity’s telecast also introduced in an extraordinarily spectacular 742,000 viewers in the important thing 25-fifty four age demographic coveted via advertisers. The nighttime repeat of the controversy brought the whole viewership of the experience as much as 5.four million whole viewers. Fox News crushed its cable information competitors all the way through the talk, accounting for nearly seventy three% of cable news’s total viewership and 77% of the cable news’s demo viewers on the time.

So far as political programming goes this yr, the debate used to be an plain win for Fox and topped former President Donald Trump’s town halls. In July, Trump’s city hall with Hannity brought in some 2.9 million whole viewers, which was once simply marginally better than the 2.eight million he introduced in with Hannity in June.

Trump’s June adventure also brought in about half of the demo’s 320,000 viewers as the DeSantis-Newsom debate.

Trump’s CNN town corridor on Could 10, hosted by way of Kaitlin Collins, scored fairly better with three.31 million whole viewers and 781,000 demo viewers, which was an enormous raise for the ratings-beleaguered network.

For context, Fox’s final 5 Trump city corridor situations outperformed CNN handing over 5.1 million, four.four million, four.2 million, three.8 million, and 3.5 million — with Hannity’s June 2020 experience prime the best way.

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