GOP Adds Another Debate, Fox News to Host

By Chris Ariens 

Fox News will host its third Republican presidential primary debate on Thursday, March 3 from Detroit. The 2-hour debate will air live at 9 p.m. ET. Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace will return as moderators.

The debate will take place two days after Super Tuesday, which will likely narrow the GOP field for the debate. It comes ahead of primaries in Michigan on March 8 and Florida and Ohio on March 15. There is not planned to be a so-called Happy Hour debate of lower-tier candidates.

This will be the 11th GOP debate of this cycle. Four years ago, the GOP debates had wrapped up by Feb. 22, 2012, with a total of 20.

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FNC’s previous Republican primary debates of this cycle were the two most-watched telecasts in the network’s history: the Aug. 6 debate (with Donald Trump) and the Jan. 28 debate (without Trump).

Here’s the 2016 debate ranker, which includes Nielsen viewership data, along with livestreaming information provided by the networks.

Debate Network Total Viewers A25-54 Streams
Aug. 6 | GOP Fox News 24,000,000 7,900,000 2,400000**
Sept. 16 | GOP CNN 22,940,000 6,900,000 4,500,000
Oct. 13 | Dem CNN 15,791,000 4,998,000 4,300,000
Oct. 28 | GOP CNBC 14,000,000 3,900,000 ***
Nov. 10 | GOP FBN 13,500,000 3,670,000 2,580,000
Nov. 14 | Dem CBS 8,500,000 2,120,000 1,200,000
Dec. 15 | GOP CNN 18,165,000 5,560,000 3,100,000
Dec. 19 | Dem ABC 7,850,000 1,928,000 ***
Jan. 14 | GOP FBN 11,094,000 2,983,000 1,165,000
Jan. 17 | Dem NBC 10,200,000 3,170,000 1,200,000
Jan. 28 | GOP Fox News 12,466,000 3,467,000 708,724
Feb. 4 | Dem MSNBC TBD TBD TBD
Feb. 6 | GOP ABC TBD TBD TBD
Feb. 11 | Dem PBS TBD TBD TBD
Feb. 13 | GOP CBS TBD TBD TBD
Feb. 26 | GOP CNN TBD TBD TBD
Mar. 3 | GOP Fox News TBD TBD TBD
Mar. 9 | Dem Univision TBD TBD TBD

**Users needed to be an authenticated viewer to watch the livestream.
***ABC & CNBC have not shared their livestream data.

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