The 2024 Republican National Convention reached its highest viewership on its final night, averaging 25.4 million viewers on Thursday. Viewership peaked at 28.4 million between 10:45 and 11 p.m., on the early side of a 90-minute speech by former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump.
As on the previous nights of the convention, Fox News Channel’s coverage was the most watched, in fact setting a record for the most watched cable news conference coverage in history. During the period from 10:30 p.m. to 11 p.m., the channel itself averaged 10.9 million viewers, not far behind the 11.7 million viewers achieved by broadcasters NBC, ABC and CBS combined.
Over the entire week of the convention, Fox News averaged 7.6 million viewers. NBC was No. 1 among broadcasters with an average of 2.9 million viewers, followed by ABC with 2.3 million viewers and CBS with 1.7 million. Back on cable, CNN averaged 1.5 million and MSNBC averaged 1.1 million.
Thursday’s average marks a 41% increase over the average 18 million viewers who tuned in on Wednesday, when vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance spoke at the convention. Monday, the first night of the convention, averaged 18.1 million viewers, dropping to 14.8 million viewers on Tuesday.
Trump described the assassination attempt on him this past weekend as “a providential experience,” saying, “In a way, I felt very safe because I had God by my side. I really felt that” and told the crowd that he “wasn’t supposed to be here.”
Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh, who analyzed Trump’s days as a reality TV star in the book “Apprentice in Wonderland,” wrote that Trump “did what he does best” during the “disjointed” speech. He talked, and talked, and talked,” and that “nothing gave Trump more excitement than exploiting a personal tragedy in the interest of topping the Nielsen ratings.” Trump brought props and photos as he went through the most traumatic experience of his life — surviving an assassination attempt on Saturday afternoon in Butler, Pennsylvania — and turned it into a Barbara Walters-worthy tell-all, playing both interviewer and interviewee.