President Biden delivered his first State of the Union address on Tuesday, March 1 from 9-10:15 p.m. ET.
Fox News Channel was the most-watched TV network for the 2022 State of the Union (7.21 million), while ABC News was the top TV network for SOTU coverage in the A25-54 demo (1.87 million). ABC was also the most-watched broadcast network (6.3 million) and experienced its most-watched State of the Union since 2012. CNN’s SOTU coverage averaged the most adults 25-54 of any cable TV network (1.79 million), as well as the most adults 18-49 of any broadcast or cable TV network (1.53 million).
According to live-plus-same-day data from Nielsen, 34.6 million people watched President Biden’s first State of the Union address on nine cable and broadcast news networks. The 34.6 million figure does not include viewing on PBS, Bloomberg or the Spanish language networks.
Fox News attracted more viewers for Biden’s State of the Union than it has for any previous State of the Union address by a Democratic president. However, the network was down double digits relative to Trump’s State of the Union addresses in 2020 and 2018. Fox TV, and NBC also saw losses from 2020 and 2018, whereas ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC gained viewers from 2020 and 2018. CBS was up from 2020 but down from 2018.
| SOTU 2022 | ||
| P2+ | A25-54 | |
| Fox News | 7,206,000 | 1,709,000 |
| ABC | 6,302,000 | 1,872,000 |
| CBS | 4,857,000 | 1,082,000 |
| CNN | 4,830,000 | 1,788,000 |
| NBC | 4,705,000 | 1,533,000 |
| MSNBC | 4,057,000 | 680,000 |
| Fox TV | 1,858,000 | 654,000 |
| Newsmax | 462,000 | 79,000 |
| CNBC | 284,000 | 117,000 |
| 34,561,000 | 9,514,000 |
Additionally, Fox News was the top-rated cable news network for coverage of the Republican response from Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, airing from 10:30-10:45 p.m. ET—and averaging nearly 6 million total viewers and 1.34 million in the 25-54 demo, per live-plus-same-day data from Nielsen.
| GOP Response | ||
| P2+ | A25-54 | |
| Fox News | 5,998,000 | 1,344,000 |
| CNN | 3,031,000 | 1,116,000 |
| MSNBC | 2,814,000 | 459,000 |
| 11,843,000 | 2,919,000 |