Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate offered more fireworks than the previous political shout-fests — but fewer Americans tuned in to watch it than any of its five predecessors.
The debate in Los Angeles drew an audience of 6.17 million viewers — lowest so far of the cycle, according to early numbers from Nielsen, Deadline reported Friday.
PBS NewsHour and Politico hosted the debate at Loyola Marymount University, and it also was simulcast by CNN.
Nielsen reported that the debate posted 2.062 million viewers on PBS and 4.088 watched it on CNN.
Despite the sinking ratings, CNN boasted that it beat its cable news rivals in the key 8 to 11 p.m. block with an average of 3.97 million viewers, compared to 3.64 for Fox News and 1.83 million for MSNBC.
In the 25-54 demographic, CNN averaged 1.03 million to Fox News’ 613,000 and MSNBC’s 271,000.
PBS said livestreams from PBS NewsHour, Politico, PBS and CNN platform totaled more than 8.4 million viewers.
The November presidential debate, seen on MSNBC, drew 6.5 million total viewers, Nielsen reported.
Like Thursday’s contest, the November debate followed a day in which impeachment proceedings dominated the news cycle.
The most viewed Democratic debate so far was the first, in June, when 18.1 million tuned in to NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo, according to the website.
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