MSNBC’s and Fox News’ normal nightly lineup beat CNN’s five-hour five presidential candidate town hall special Monday night.
CNN’s town halls featured Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, California Sen. Kamala Harris and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
The average viewership for each of their town halls was 1,201,000 with 371,000 in the 25-54 key age demographic, according to early Nielsen Media Research. MSNBC’s nightly programming of Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell and Brian Williams had over half a million more, with 1,810,000 viewers, but CNN beat them in the key demo.
Fox News’ coverage of Martha MacCallum, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Shannon Bream finished the night with over a million more viewers than the town halls, averaging 2,262,000 viewers with 380,000 in the demo.
NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – MARCH 01: U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) speaks during a town hall meeting at Canyon Springs High School on March 1, 2019 in North Las Vegas, Nevada. Harris is campaigning for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Klobuchar’s town hall, which took place at 7 p.m., garnered 869,000 viewers. It lost to the other networks’ programming by over half-a-million viewers and this was down from her first town hall on the network. That event, which took place in February, had 1.15 million viewers. She is scheduled to participate in a town hall on Fox News next month.
Warren, who had a previous town hall on the network, barely beat that one out with a viewership of 1,180,000 people. The town hall on Monday lost out to Carlson’s show by 1.7 million viewers.
Sanders’ town hall had 1,336,000 viewers, which had nearly an identical audience to his previous CNN town hall. His Fox News event from last week blew both out of the water raking in 2.5 million people — making it the largest town hall this season to date. For Monday’s event, CNN had 1.5 million fewer viewers than Fox News’ Sean Hannity. (Bernie Mentioned On Cable News Nearly Twice As Much As Any Other Candidate)
Further, Harris, who has the highest rated CNN town hall back in January, had approximately half-a-million fewer viewers this time around with 1,440,000.
Buttigeig came in second-to-last in terms of crowd with only 1.18 million viewers. This event had more than twice as many viewers as his previous town hall on the network. Earlier in the day, Fox News announced a town hall with the mayor scheduled for next month.