RNC 2020: Sharp decline in night-one ratings from 2016 with only 17M TV viewers compared to DNC’s 18.7M
The 2020 Republican National Convention's (RNC) first night on Monday, August 24, reportedly averaged 17 million television viewers, marking a sharp decline of 26 percent from the event before the 2016 presidential elections. The total falls short of the DNC’s night-one viewership of 18.7 million.
Among the channels telecasting the convention, Fox News was the most-watched channel for the coverage between 10 and 11 PM, with an average of 7.1 million viewers, followed by CNN, with an average of 2 million users, ABC with 1.97 million users, and NBC with 1.7 million users on average.
For Fox News, which is known for its conservative-leaning coverage, Monday's event garnered the largest audience for opening night convention coverage ever for a cable news network. The channel, however, consistently leads in the ratings during Republican convention weeks. Reports state that the network's program "Hannity," which aired at 9 AM averaged 6.8 million viewers, witnessed its second-largest audience ever for the program on Monday, according to the Los Angeles Times. The first night of the convention featured speeches from prominent Republicans like former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott.
The sharp decline in the percentage of TV viewers from the 2016 convention, when Trump was first nominated to run for president by the Republican party, was reportedly comparable to what the Democratic National Convention (DNC) witnessed last week. It was also reported that the drop in viewership could also be partly because of a consistent decline in television users, particularly viewers younger than the age of 50.
Although there was an overall decline in TV viewership of the conventions, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) stated that it noted an increase in the number of viewers watching the convention events on streaming platforms. According to its figures, DNC garnered around 35 million live video streams across four nights. It is reported that the streaming audience for the RNC is also expected to rise above the 2016 figures.
The TV ratings come a day after multiple conservative social media users took to Twitter on Monday, to claim that Amazon Prime Video did not offer a live stream of the Republican National Convention (RNC) during primetime that day. They alleged that although Amazon live-streamed all four nights of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) last week, they faced difficulty in finding a live stream of RNC's first day, suggesting a possible RNC blackout by the company.
Breitbart News also released a report claiming that it made several attempts to search for a primetime RNC live-stream on Amazon, however, it only found archived RNC footage from earlier in the day. The outlet and a few Twitter users also claimed that searching for RNC coverage on Amazon was more difficult than searching for DNC footage. Search result for the term "DNC" brought up Amazon’s live streams from all four days of the Democratic National Convention, however, the same search for "RNC" did not reflect anything related to the Republican convention on Monday.
One Twitter user wrote: "@AmazonHelp Are you live streaming the Republican National Convention tonight?" To which the Amazon customer service replied, writing: Thanks for reaching out to us today. The RNC was live-streamed on August 24 from 9 to 10:30 am EST (one day only). The customer then responded saying they were canceling their subscription: "So no Prime Time coverage got it. Canceling Amazon Prime."