SOTU By The Numbers: NBC and Fox Outperform the Competition

Only 33.3 million Americans watched the State of the Union on Tuesday -that's the lowest number since 2000. But for those who did tune in, the competition for their eyeballs was fierce. The numbers are in on SOTU coverage -and on the analysis programming that came after -and the big winners are NBC among the networks and Fox News on cable. Though CBS had the most viewers for the speech itself -7.5 million -they lost about 1 million of them after it was over. By contrast, NBC held relatively steady with just under 7 million viewers for the speech and post coverage. They also won the 25-54 demo during the speech, and actually improved on those numbers during post-SOTU coverage, when the networks really differentiated themselves. On cable, Fox News far out-performed it's cable rivals. As noted on our sister site TVNewser, their 4.5+ million viewers were more than MSNBC's and CNN's combined. Post-speech coverage was no different, with Fox News winning overall and in the demo. The numbers from Tuesday night: State of the Union Coverage 1. CBS: 7,580,000 total viewers / 2,269,000 A25-54 2. NBC: 6,984,000 total viewers / 2,467,000 A25-54 3. ABC: 5,569,000 total viewers / 1,990,000 A25-54 4. Fox News: 4,718,853 viewers / 1,197,554 A25-54 5. MSNBC: 2,292,169 viewers / 752,054 A25-54 6. CNN: 2,081,431 viewers / 762,450 A25-54 Post-SOTU Coverage 1. NBC: 6,702,000 viewers / 2,537,000 A25-54 2. CBS: 6,558,000 viewers / 2,015,000 A25-54 3. ABC: 5,565,000 viewers / 2,047,000 A25-54 4. Fox News: 4,513,177 viewers / 1,106,000 A25-54 5. MSNBC: 2,167,242 viewers / 704,000 A25-54 6. CNN: 2,081,431 viewers / 663,000 A25-54

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SOTU By The Numbers: NBC and Fox Outperform the Competition

Patrick Tutwiler

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Patrick Tutwiler