The CNN town hall featuring former vice president Mike Pence, moderated by Dana Bash, garnered a total viewership of 632,000 on Wednesday evening, an 81% decrease in viewership compared to CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump, which generated 3.3 million viewers.
According to The Wrap, among adults aged 25-54, the town hall attracted 128,000 viewers in the key cable demographic. Pence’s telecast did see a 4.5% increase from CNN’s town hall with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley earlier that week, which had a viewership of 562,000.
Although Haley’s town hall achieved the highest demo viewership among cable news networks during its Sunday evening time slot, CNN’s town hall with Pence did not make significant headway against its competitors. CNN ranked third in both total viewership and demo viewership during the 9 p.m. time slot when the town hall aired.
In terms of total viewers, Fox News’ Hannity and MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tonight, both airing in the 9:00 PM ET hour, outperformed CNN, with Fox News attracting 1.9 million viewers and MSNBC securing 1.3 million viewers, surpassing CNN’s total viewership by more than double.
This trend continued in the key cable demographic, as CNN’s demo viewership of 128,000 fell behind MSNBC’s 170,000 and Fox News’ 147,000 during the 9 p.m. hour.
The town hall had little impact on CNN’s overall primetime ratings for Wednesday. Fox News led the night with an average of 1.4 million viewers, followed by MSNBC with 1.1 million viewers. CNN secured third place with 509,000 total viewers in primetime.
In the key demo, Fox News ranked first with 157,000 viewers, MSNBC came in second with 142,000 demo viewers, and CNN obtained third place with 107,000 viewers in the demo.
