Washington – The Fourth of July meant hot dogs, fireworks and President Donald Trump for many Fox News viewers.
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Fox News reached an average of 4.09 million viewers between 6 and 8 p.m. EDT last Thursday for its coverage of Trump’s much-discussed holiday parade in Washington, D.C., the Nielsen company said. The audience was over 4.6 million during the concentrated hour during which Trump gave a rain-soaked speech.
Those are strong numbers for the Fourth of July, traditionally one of the least-watched days of the year for television as people concentrate on outdoor activities. During the same time last July Fourth, Fox had 1.29 million viewers, Nielsen said.
It was even more than double Fox’s average viewership for the time slot for a typical workday this year.
Fox was the only commercial television network to say ahead of time that it would air Trump’s speech. CNN, which also aired it and had 1.4 million viewers, did not disclose its coverage plans before the event. MSNBC did not air the speech and had 397,000 viewers, Nielsen said.
The week’s most popular television event started Sunday morning, when the U.S. women’s soccer team beat The Netherlands for the World Cup before 14.3 million viewers.
Behind the summertime favorite “America’s Got Talent,” NBC averaged 3.5 million viewers in prime time last week. CBS had 3.4 million, ABC had 2.8 million, Fox had 1.6 million, Univision had 1.5 million, ION Television had 1.4 million, Telemundo had 1 million and the CW had 560,000.
Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.01 million viewers in prime time. MSNBC had 1.16 million, HGTV had 1.14 million, USA had 1.05 million and TLC had 1 million.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.8 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” had 6.8 million and the “CBS Evening News,” where Norah O’Donnell takes over as anchor next week, averaged 5.1 million.
For the week of July 1-7, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “America’s Got Talent,” NBC, 6.82 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 6.8 million; “Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks,” NBC, 5.87 million; “The Bachelorette,” ABC, 5.77 million; Men’s Soccer: Mexico vs United States, Univision, 5.66 million; “Celebrity Family Feud,” ABC, 5.3 million; “The $100,000 Pyramid,” ABC, 4.9 million; “American Ninja Warrior,” NBC, 4.75 million; “Big Brother” (Tuesday), CBS, 4.46 million; “Big Brother” (Sunday), CBS, 4.32 million.
That means if 4.6 million Fox viewers heard the President say that the American troops took the airports from the British. Most of them probably didn’t realize that that never happened in 1781. They probably also didn’t notice the merger of the Revolution and the War of 1812 by Trump
I heard the speech in its entirety; I am not anti-Trump. However, the speech was boring to say the least. Although a noted Physician who had pioneered research in fighting leukemia was mentioned, there was no mention of Drs. Jonas Salk, and Albert Sabin who saved the lives of millions of children, pertaining to preventing polio. In addition to the flub about “airports”, there was also another error, which was not detected by Trump’s speech writers, before delivery. He stated that “no American soldier has been killed by an enemy air force, in over 65 years”. The latter statement was not accurate, since a North Korean MIG, attacked an unarmed U.S. reconnaissance aircraft in international waters, in 1969, killing 31 American airmen. Last, I don’t know why he had the U.S. Army chorus singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. It would have been more appropriate if they sang “G-d Bless America”.
Big Deal…The Fuhrer and his rapt Party members.
What a fake news headline and story. Since FOX was the only network besides the unwatched CNN of course that’s why they had so many viewers.