Apparently a lot of people are interested: the first hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol Hill attack garnered 20 million viewers. Fox News, which declined to run the hearings and instead ran Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity’s shows without commercial breaks — clearly to discourage viewers to tune in to the actually hearing — got 3 million for its regular programming block. Tucker Carlson’s show attracted his normal number of viewers.
In terms of viewership, Fox’s counter programming was largely a flop.
Nearly 20 million people watched Thursday night’s first hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol across broadcast and cable news, according to preliminary ratings figures from Nielsen.
Each of the major broadcast television news networks preempted their regularly scheduled programming on Thursday to show continuous live coverage of the two-hour hearings.
On cable, MSNBC pulled in a whopping 4.1 million viewers during the hearings, nearly four times what the network averages on a typical weeknight.
Usually dominant Fox News Channel came in second place on cable on Thursday night, averaging 3 million viewers from 8 to 10 p.m. CNN came in third place with 2.6 million.
Fox took criticism this week for its decision not to air continuous live coverage of the hearings on its main cable channel. The network did not preempt its regularly scheduled opinion shows, featuring hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
There could be a case made for Fox not carrying the actual hearings: some note that the network was under no real obligation to show the hearings and was giving its viewers what it wanted.
But going commercial-less suggested there was a political decision to try and get viewers to not turn the channel and see the committee’s live, unfiltered presentation. That view is bolstered by the fact that Fox News reportedly didn’t show the hearing’s stunning video footage of what many now call the January 6 coup attempt as it aired. Rather, it reportedly showed shots of people watching the footage.
It’s official: MASSIVE RATINGS for the first night of the January 6th hearings — and this doesn’t even include the millions who watched on streaming platforms. https://t.co/DDbZ3T4lDh
— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) June 10, 2022
Last night, @TuckerCarlson and @seanhannity were in the air for two hours…. Without commercial. Why without commercial you ask?
During commercials people change the channel. And would stumble on the hearing, and the truth
— Adam Kinzinger?????? (@AdamKinzinger) June 11, 2022
Wow — Nielsen reports a whopping 20 million people watched Jan. 6 committee opening hearing last night: ABC with 4.8M, MSNBC with 4.1M, NBC with 3.5M, CBS with 3.3M, CNN with 2.6M.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 10, 2022
About 20 million people watched the opening night of hearings of the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection, according to Nielsen. By comparison, the opening day of each of the Trump impeachment trials drew about 11 million viewers. https://t.co/4vgOG8Eb6n
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 10, 2022
An important stat, in total viewership:
Hillary at Benghazi hearing: 4M viewers
Night one of 1/6 hearing: 20M viewers
— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) June 10, 2022
On cable, MSNBC pulled in a whopping 4.1 million viewers.
Fox came in second place on cable on Thursday night, averaging 3 million viewers from 8 to 10 p.m. despite not airing not air live continuous coverage.
CNN came in third place with 2.6 million.
— Dominick Mastrangelo (@DomMastrangelo1) June 10, 2022
The most watched show in the last 2 months?
Last nights January 6th hearings.
Combined Viewership: 20 Million Viewers
The next closest for most watched: NBA Game 3 Finals with 11.5 Million Viewers.
Yet, Fox News keeps telling me I don’t care anymore ?
— YS (@ReallyActivist) June 10, 2022
As more Neilsen details come out, it's now clear that both CNN and MSNBC bested Fox last might in the key news demo of adults 25-54. MSNBC, in fact, clobbered them. (And this is despite the fact that Fox aired commercial-free.)
— Duty To Warn ? (@duty2warn) June 10, 2022
None so blind …https://t.co/sILeOmsZzm
— Pat Bagley (@Patbagley) June 10, 2022
Bad ratings for @TuckerCarlson and Fox. SAD! https://t.co/BRZNSqLepH
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 10, 2022
Ratings are a language Trump understands. https://t.co/AlKguAIJiv
— Markos Moulitsas (@markos) June 10, 2022
These are great #January6thCommittee ratings numbers that make the former President jealous.
To put the nearly 20 million viewers numbers into perspective, last Thursday’s Warriors Celtics game had 11.9 million viewers. https://t.co/pcUd6DV6aH
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) June 11, 2022
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.