Republican Debate on Fox News Doesn’t Need Trump to Notch Top Ratings

variety.com:

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The Republicans don’t need Donald Trump to get people to pay attention to their causes. Approximately 12.8 million viewers tuned in Wednesday night to see a telecast of the first Republican primary debate in the race for the 2024 presidential election, according to data from Nielsen, with 11.1 million viewers watching the event on Fox News Channel and another 1.7 million viewing it on sister outlet Fox Business Network.

Eight candidates took part. The attention came even though Trump, the former president who has a commanding lead in Republican polls, decided to take part in a pre-taped and meandering interview with former Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson that was streamed on X, the social-media venue once known as Twitter.

To be sure, the TV figures represent a decline in attention from the 24 million viewers –still a record — who tuned in to Fox News in 2016 for the first Republican featuring Trump.

And the figures don’t match the 18.1 million wo watched an early-cycle Democratic debate in June 2019. But Wednesday’s combined number beat everything else on TV last night, and is the most-watched non-sports cable telecast of the year.