Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The audience for NewsNation‘s Wednesday-night Republican primary debate was one of the smallest and the biggest.
Nearly 1.6 million tuned in to the Nexstar-backed upstart cable-news outlet to watch two former Republican governors, one current one and one outlier tangle for attention and donors in a debate moderated by Elizabeth Vargas, Megyn Kelly and Eliana Johnson, with more than 2.5 million choosing to watch a simulcast on the CW broadcast network, a corporate sibling.
At about 4.1 million, the overall TV audience is the smallest secured so far for this cycle’s Republican debates, two of which were broadcast by Fox News Media and a third by NBCUniversal.
But for Nexstar, the numbers may as well be akin to the Super Bowl. The NewsNation primetime lineup typically lures tens of thousands, not hundreds. “This debate represents a remarkable achievement for a cable news network that is just barely three years old.
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