What does it all mean?
The population of the US is 329,243,667 (July 2019), which means less than 4%, 3.9% to be precise, of the entire US population was tuned in to the Mueller spectacle on television. Over 96% chose to ignore the painful performance.
For comparison
purposes, the 2019 Super Bowl drew a TV audience of 98.7 million viewers, which
was the smallest audience in eleven years. As for the President and
his drawing power, Donald Trump’s inauguration ratings were the second-highest in 36
years, according to Nielsen. The swearing-in of the 45th president
in 2017 was seen by 30.6 million viewers.
Even more
ominous, the President’s State of the
Union address - TV Ratings: 46.8 million watched
Trump’s 2019 State of the Union, up slightly from 46.79 million in 2018.
Here are excerpts of how some of the media reported the news.
Mueller? Mueller?
Special Counsel’s Testimony Falls Short in TV Ratings
July 25, 2019
“Whatever the reason, the
ratings for Robert S. Mueller III’s congressional testimony on Wednesday failed
to match the big viewership for other recent political spectacles.”
“An average of 13 million Americans watched the former special
counsel on the major cable and broadcast networks over the seven-and-a-half
hours of questioning, according to statistics released on Thursday by Nielsen.”
“That audience was
smaller than the 19.5 million people who watched James B. Comey, the
former F.B.I. director, describe his dealings with President Trump to Congress
in June 2017. Mr. Comey proved a surprising and animated witness, offering
memorable one-liners (“Lordy, I hope there are tapes”) that attracted about the
same audience as Game 2 of that year’s N.B.A. finals.”
Fox News’ Robert Mueller Testimony
Coverage Viewership Tops MSNBC, CNN & All Broadcast Networks
“There wasn’t any
Presidency-ending revelation, and Robert Mueller stubbornly refused to read from his special counsel
report on Donald Trump directly, but
more than 12.9 million Americans tuned in Wednesday to watch Mueller testify
live before not one but two congressional committees.”
“However, we know for
sure that Fox News Channel took the gold for the daytime viewership on Wednesday.
With an audience of 3.03 million, the Bret Baier- and Martha MacCallum-anchored
coverage on the Rupert Murdoch-owned news cabler beat runner-up MSNBC by 26% in
sets of eyeballs. In preliminary numbers for the 8:15 AM-3:45 PM ET coverage of
Mueller’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee and the House
Intelligence Committee, ABC was third with 2.12 million.”
TV viewership for Mueller hearings falls flat
Updated 2:43 PM ET,
Thu July 25, 2019
“In a possible sign of Trump-related fatigue,
neither the Mueller or Cohen hearings were as highly-rated as former FBI
Director James Comey's explosive day of testimony in June 2017, which drew about 20 million viewers.”
How does this compare to other recent events on TV?
14.5 million
viewers watched James Holzhauer's historic loss on "Jeopardy!"
JUNE 20, 2019 / 9:34 PM /
CBS/AP
TV Ratings: USA’s World
Cup Victory Over France Draws 6.3 Million Viewers
JUNE 29, 2019
