After a desultory start to the campaign season, news outlets are starting to see interest in political news perk up because of an extraordinary run of stories over the past few weeks.
The most obvious beneficiary is Fox News Channel, which is ending July with its highest viewership than any month since November 2020, the Nielsen company said. Its audience eclipsed every other network, including broadcasters ABC, CBS and NBC.
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Between July 13 and 23, former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt and accepted the Republican Party's presidential nomination. President Joe Biden dropped his bid for re-election, and Vice President Kamala Harris secured the support of enough Democrats to be the party's presidential nominee.
“We just got back and we've been gone, like, a week,” said Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's “The Daily Show” on Monday. “It's been a week, or a decade.”
More than 57 million people read news stories about the campaign on more than 2,000 news sites measured by Taboola over the past 45 days. That's a 56% increase over the previous 45-day period, the company said. Trump had been the No. 1 topic on news sites for most of 2024 until July — when Harris surpassed him, Taboola spokesman Dave Struzzi said.
Cable news ratings for the first six months of 2024 had been roughly flat compared to 2023, and many online news sites have seen diminishing numbers. While cable television ratings have suffered over the past few years as many consumers pull the plug on subscriptions, that was still an ominous sign: News leaders had been hoping a presidential election would result in more interest.
Fox's average July audience in prime-time was 3.45 million, up 66% from its average between January and June, Nielsen said. Viewership soared during coverage of the assassination attempt and the feel-good GOP convention that coronated Trump — the favorite for many of Fox's viewers — drew more people in than any other convention that has taken place in Fox's history.
More than 10 million people tuned in to Fox for Trump's convention acceptance speech alone, Nielsen said.
Fox also led its news rivals in the weekend coverage of Biden's decision to step away from the race. And CNN's prime-time average of 856,000 in July was up 41% from the network's average for the first six months of the year.
Meanwhile, MSNBC — which appeals primarily to a liberal audience — saw its fortunes sag when Trump dominated the news cycle. Its prime-time average of 1.18 million in July was actually down 3% from the first six months of the year. MSNBC did not send its anchor team to Milwaukee for the GOP convention and, during much of the event, appeared reluctant to show its audience much of what was going on there.
However, Harris' ascension changed fortunes at MSNBC markedly. During the week after Biden announced he was no longer running, the network's prime-time viewership surged to 1.7 million from about 1 million the week before, Nielsen said.
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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder.