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The
Nielsen Company said Tuesday that viewership was down from Joe
Biden's 2021 inauguration, which reached 33.8 million, and
Trump's first move into the White House, seen by 30.6 million in
2017.
Inauguration viewership has varied widely over the past
half-century, from a high of 41.8 million when Ronald Reagan
came into office in 1981 to a low of 15.5 million for the start
of George W. Bush's second term in 2004.
The length of Trump's inauguration coverage may have hurt him in
bragging rights. The 24.6 million figure represents the average
number of people tuning in to coverage on one of 15 networks
between 10:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Eastern. In past years, the
coverage didn't go on for so long, which meant the averages were
likely higher because people tune away as the day goes on.
Nielsen had no immediate estimate, for example, of how many
people watched Trump up until 4 p.m. Eastern, the cutoff point
for most inauguration coverage in the past.
There's no doubt where most viewers gravitated on Monday: Fox
News Channel had 10.3 million viewers between 11:30 a.m. and 1
p.m., when Trump was sworn in and gave his inaugural speech. In
that same period, ABC had 4.7 million viewers, NBC had 4.4
million, CBS had 4.1 million, CNN had 1.7 million and MSNBC had
848,000, Nielsen said.
Four years ago, 13.4 million people watched Biden's inauguration
on CNN and MSNBC, compared to only 2.4 million on Fox News.
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