The first Republican debate on Wednesday night drew an audience of 12.8 million viewers, according to Nielsen, indicating robust interest despite the absence of former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner in the race.<\/p>\n
The viewership figure, which includes totals from both Fox News (11.1 million viewers) and the Fox Business Network (1.7 million), was significantly higher than anything else on television on Wednesday night, and outperformed the broadcast network totals combined. It was also the most-watched cable telecast of the year outside of sports, surpassing an episode of Paramount\u2019s \u201cYellowstone,\u201d which had 8.2 million viewers, according to Nielsen.<\/p>\n
The audience total, however, is a far cry from the record 24 million viewers who tuned in to Fox News for the opening Republican debate in the 2016 election cycle, which featured Mr. Trump on a debate stage for the first time. Nor did it reach the 18.1 million who watched one of the early Democratic debates in June 2019.<\/p>\n
But the figure still exceeded expectations of some television executives, who had believed that the numbers could be low given Mr. Trump\u2019s absence as well as cable television\u2019s reduced presence in American homes compared with just a few years ago.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump, leading by a wide margin in the polls and engaged in a running feud with Fox, skipped the debate. Instead, he appeared for an interview with Tucker Carlson \u2014 the former prime-time star, who was ousted by Fox News this year \u2014 on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. The interview was posted shortly before the debate began on Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump declared his X interview a \u201cblockbuster\u201d on Thursday morning. It is not clear, however, how many people watched the interview. Anytime users on X scroll past a post with the video in their feed, it counts as a \u201cview\u201d \u2014 one of the few metrics the social network makes public \u2014 whether they watched the video or not. Nielsen\u2019s television ratings more rigorously track the number of people who watched a program.<\/p>\n
The Fox News debate featured eight candidates, who often sparred aggressively with one another. They were Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Tim Scott, Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum.<\/p>\n
The Fox News debate moderators, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, spent about 10 minutes of questions on Mr. Trump and his four criminal indictments, with Mr. Baier saying he had to acknowledge the \u201celephant not in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next Republican debate will be on Sept. 27 on Fox Business.<\/p>\n