Forget Donald Trump — Fox News Channel (FNC) and NBC were the big winners Monday on Night 1 of the Republican National Convention.
The cable news network topped total viewers — and by a substantial margin — while NBC had the most eyeballs from the key 25-54 news demographic.
CNN was also able to beat NBC in total audience, though that came by a fairly narrow margin. FNC was a close second in the main demo.
Throughout all of primetime — which covers 8-11 p.m. — CNN was way up from the last convention in 2012, when Mitt Romney was the GOP nominee. That network had a 3.603 million total viewer average last night versus 1.201 million four years ago. Meanwhile, MSNBC jumped from 1.317 million in 2012 to 1.925 million. Fox News ticked up to 5.502 million versus 5.150 million in 2012.
Broadcast networks didn’t cover Night 1 of the 2012 convention due to inclement weather, so there are no accurate comps for those networks.
Below is the 10 o’clock hour breakdown from the opening evening, inclusive of both broadcast and cable news.
Total Viewers
Fox News: 6.348 million
CNN: 3.943 million
NBC: 3.913 million
ABC: 3.643 million
CBS: 2.693 million
MSNBC: 1.995 million
Key Demo (25-54)
NBC: 1.637 million
Fox News: 1.600 million
CNN: 1.373 million
ABC: 1.254 million
CBS: 785,000
MSNBC: 503,000