A TV audience of more than 15 million watched Thursday as former President Donald Trump became a convicted felon. Starting around 4:45 p.m.
Eastern, viewing surged for cable news and broadcast networks as they delivered a New York jury’s verdict to convict Trump on 34 felony counts against him in the New York hush money case. Trump was accused of falsifying business records related to a payment made to silence adult film actor Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. Nielsen data showed that the plurality of viewers were tuned into Fox News, which is regularly the most-watched network in the hour, thanks to its popular panel show “The Five.
” Fox News stayed with anchor Shannon Bream until about 5:43 p.m. before “ The Five” co-hosts weighed in with harsh criticism of the verdict from the network’s pro-Trump commentators.
Fox News averaged 4.7 million viewers from 5 p.m.
to 6 p.m. Eastern, when it typically pulls in around 3 million.
The verdict started rolling in at 5:06 p.m. Eastern.
MSNBC, which had a large on-screen ticker that tallied the number of guilty verdicts as they came in, scored 3.7 million viewers in the hour, nearly doubling its typical turn out for anchor Nicolle Wallace’s program. CNN also saw its audience spike, with 2.
6 million viewers Preliminary ratings from Nielsen show that ABC had the most viewers among the broadcast networks with 3.4 million viewers for a special report that aired at 4:48 p.m.
Eastern. A CBS News special report sc.
