President Donald Trump cares about ratings, possibly more than almost anything else. So no one should tell him that he just lost the ratings war to Joe Biden in what many saw as ill-conceived “dueling” town halls Thursday night.
The numbers, we should caution, aren’t final but Deadline calls it a “solid win for Joe Biden.”
“After all the concerns about threats to democracy in the pursuit of ratings, Thursday’s dueling town halls between Donald Trump on NBC and Joe Biden on ABC ended up being a very good night for Savannah Guthrie, a very very good night for the Atlanta Braves and a most excellent night for the former Vice-President,” Deadline’s Dominic Patten reports.
“Biden drew 12.7 million total viewers on the Disney-owned network, while Trump drew 10.4 million in the same 9-10 p.m. [Central] time slot on NBC,” Variety reports “Across the entire runtime, the Biden town hall averaged 12.3 million viewers. In terms of the fast national 18-49 demographic, Biden is comfortably on top with a 2.6 rating to Trump’s 1.7.”
In short, Biden beat Trump by about 2.3 million more viewers.
Trump actually had a far better chance of beating Biden from a reach standpoint: His one hour town hall was broadcast on NBC, but also two of NBC’s cable news networks –MSNBC and CNBC – and was streamed online across those channels’ platforms as well as Telemundo.com.
Biden’s town hall aired on ABC and was streamed on ABC.com.
YouTube also carried both town halls.
“At the end of Trump’s town hall, the NBC News YouTube channel showed 153,660 viewers were watching” Trump, Newsweek reported Thursday night. But the former vice president, who was on “ABC News’s YouTube channel showed 507,445 viewers at the end of Biden’s town hall.”
ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl was only too happy to share the news: