President Biden’s press conference ratings: 24.2 million viewers

About 24.2 million people watched President Joe Biden’s press conference at the NATO summit on Thursday, according to Nielsen data. That’s more than the 20.3 million people who watched President Biden address the nation on October 19 regarding the wars in Israel and Ukraine, and it’s hovering in the State of the Union address area as interest continues exists when it comes to President Biden’s physical measures. state and performance.

Nielsen did not analyze ratings by network, but did compile viewership on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Univision, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, all of which carried the press conference live from approximately 7:30 PM ET to 8:30 PM ET. Most of that viewership was in the 55+ demo, where 19.2 million viewers watched live. Among adults aged 18 to 34, this number was just over 1 million, while among adults aged 35 to 54, it was 3.6 million.

According to Fox News, it led the way with 5.67 million viewers, followed by ABC (4.97 million, making it No. 1 on air), CBS (3.60 million), NBC (3.55 million), MSNBC (2.52 million) and CNN (2.22 million). ).

Among adults 25 to 54, ABC topped the list with 879,000, followed by Fox News (835,000), CBS (611,000), NBC (592,000), CNN (439,000) and MSNBC (319,000).

By comparison, last Friday evening, about 8.5 million viewers watched President Biden’s heavily hyped interview with ABC News host George Stephanopoulos.

And on June 27, the presidential debate between Biden and Trump, which set off the media frenzy over Biden’s lackluster performance, averaged 51.3 million viewers across 17 networks.

But presidential press conferences rarely achieve mega-ratings. A good comparison might be the annual State of the Union address, which this year saw an average attendance of 32.2 million people. That was up from 27.3 million viewers in 2023 and 26.9 million viewers in 2021. In 2022, about 38.2 million people watched Biden’s State of the Union address — just days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine .

Here are the details of Thursday’s address: