President Biden spoke from the Oval Office Wednesday about his decision to step away from the race for the White House. Fox News and ABC News each earned rating victories.
From 8-8:15 PM ET, President Biden spoke on his rationale for leaving the race, and why he is pledging his support to Vice President Kamala Harris as she’ll face former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, in the November election.
On Fox News, more than 5.1 million viewers tuned into the address. Meanwhile, MSNBC saw 3.3 million viewers, with CNN garnering 2.3 million.
Of those three networks, none eclipsed a million viewers in the adults 25-54 demographic. Fox News led the demographic with 862,000 in the demo, while (CNN (568,000) and MSNBC (416,000) finished second and third.
On network television, 6.5 million viewers watched the President’s address on ABC News. An additional 4 million viewed it on CBS, with 1.4 million viewers tuning into the FOX network. Immediate figures were unavailable for NBC.
ABC was the only network that saw more than 1 million viewers from the 25-54 demographic, with 1.3 million watching on that channel. 837,000 watched on CBS, while another 444,000 consumed the speech on the FOX network.
In total, 29 million people viewed the President’s speech, according to Nielsen.
The results showing ABC News and Fox News leading the cable and network news categories of Biden’s White House address coincide with the same two networks leading coverage of his decision to step aside from the race which broke on Sunday afternoon.
