Fox News Scored 11% More Viewers for First Night of GOP Convention Compared to 2016

Not only did Fox News pull in the biggest audience for the first night of the Republican National Convention on Monday, but the network scored more viewers than it did four years ago for the opening of the 2016 event. According to Nielsen Media Research data, Fox News averaged 7.063 million total viewers from 10 p.m. ET to 11 p.m. ET, an 11% jump from 2016, when it brought in 6.348 million viewers for the opening night of the RNC that first nominated Donald Trump to be president. Those numbers dwarfed the cable news competition as CNN had just over 2 million average total viewers and MSNBC — which had dominated in the ratings of last week’s Democratic National Convention — averaged only 1.57 million. CNN held strong in the advertiser-coveted age demographic of 25 to 54, beating all of the broadcast networks and MSNBC. Fox News still dominated with an average of 1.572 million demo viewers in the hour, while CNN brought in 606,000 and MSNBC saw an average of 308,000. All three saw dips in total and demo viewers from the previous election cycle in 2016. During the first night of the RNC in 2016, Fox News had 1.6 million viewers in the key demo. That same year, CNN averaged 3.945 million total viewers in the key primetime hour, with 1.374 million of those in the key demo. MSNBC had 1.996 million total average viewers that year, and of them, 503,000 were between 25 and 54. When factoring in the audience from broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC, the first night of the RNC drew a total of 15.8 million viewers across the six networks. That’s a drop from the first night of the Democratic convention last Monday, which averaged 18.8 million viewers. The first night of the RNC included speeches from former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott, Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle and more, as well as words from President Donald Trump himself.