The circus was in town Thursday night, and CNN/Telemundo sold a bunch of tickets.
The two GOP debate host networks combined for 14.521 million total viewers on Thursday. The cable news channel grabbed 91 percent of those overall eyeballs, 13.326 million viewers. That left 1.265 million for Telemundo.
In the key 25-54 demographic, 4.684 million viewers tuned in via linear TV. Of those, 4.058 million — about 87 percent — watched on CNN, while 626,000 checked out out via Telemundo.
Both the 14.5 million sum and the 4.7 million demo count mark the fifth-largest figures for a primary debate ever. Additionally, Thursday’s event was the biggest debate thus-far in calendar 2016 — the rightwing ones have been chronologically growing as we head towards Super Tuesday.
Here are the 2016 GOP debate totals, in chronological order:
Fox Business: 11 million
Fox News: 12.5 million
ABC: 13.3 million
CBS: 13.5 million
CNN/Telemundo: 14.5 million
Last night’s debate also saw 10 million video starts and 2.1 million total live streams via the web, CNN app, Apple TV and Roku. Streaming engagement peaked at 10:05 p.m. ET with 708,000 concurrent streams.
The GOP event was live from Houston, Tex. and moderated by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Questioners included Dana Bash, Telemundo’s Maria Celeste Arraras and Salem Radio host Hugh Hewitt.