Roger Ailes‘ final day as head of Fox News and Fox Business, was also one of the most-watched days ever for the news channel.
The 10 p.m. ET hour of America’s Election Headquarters, anchored by Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly, averaged 9.7 million viewers, making it the most-watched 10 p.m. convention telecast ever for the channel and beating all other cable and broadcast competitors. Here’s a look at total and demo viewers during speeches from Ivanka and Donald Trump.
- 10-11:45 p.m. July 21, 2016
FNC: 9,353,525 / 2,483,186
CNN: 5,476,554 / 1,901,198
NBC: 4,587,000 / 1,766,000
ABC: 3,861,000 / 1,431,000
CBS: 3,809,000 / 1,208,000
MSNBC: 2,953,582 / 927,309
For Fox, the Republican primary kicked off and concluded in Cleveland. The Quicken Loans Arena, which hosted the RNC, was also home to the first GOP primary debate last August which drew 24 million viewers to Fox News. Cleveland also happens to be where Roger Ailes began his TV career, in 1962. Ailes resigned from Fox on Thursday following an internal investigation into accusations of sexual harassment touched off by Gretchen Carlson’s lawsuit filed July 6.
As FNC’s 7 p.m. anchor Greta Van Susteren told us Thursday afternoon, after it was revealed Ailes would be leaving, and Rupert Murdoch had named himself interim chief, “The staff is so busy here. We needed, like, 10 minutes to stop and listen to [Murdoch’s] message, but then we got back to work.”
Meanwhile, Fox Business Network, whose founding in 2007 Murdoch championed, also scored big during the RNC against cable competitor CNBC. In fact, for the first time ever, FBN topped CNBC during the RNC in total viewers, for the full day as well as in prime time.
Prime time coverage from FBN’s Maria Bartiromo, Trish Regan and Lou Dobbs beat CNBC’s mix of Shark Tank re-runs and Your Money, Your Vote RNC coverage by 25 percent in total viewers for the week . The total day win was a 10 percent advantage.
- Total Day average; July 18-21, 2016 | Total Viewers / A25-54 demo
FBN: 178,000 / 32,000
CNBC: 162,000 / 50,000
- Prime time average; July 18-21, 2016 | Total Viewers / A25-54 demo
FBN: 363,000 / 76,000
CNBC: 290,000 / 107,000