Election night television viewership drops sharply from 2020 and 2016

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The idea of grabbing some popcorn and watching television to see who America has chosen for its next president was far less appealing this year than in the past.

The Nielsen company said that 42.3 million people watched election night returns between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump pour in Tuesday night. That's down sharply from the 56.9 million who watched in 2020, when Trump competed against Joe Biden, and the 71.4 million who tuned in on election night 2016, Nielsen said.

Election night is often known as the Super Bowl for TV news, but this year even the NFL's conference championship games were watched by more people.

Television viewership in general has slipped over the past decade with people cutting cable and satellite subscriptions, so it's hard to know how much this downturn reflects people turning elsewhere for news that night, or simply less interest in following the results.

The three largest cable news networks — CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC — accounted for just over 10 million of the lost audience.

Fox News Channel was the most-watched network on Tuesday, with 9.8 million people watching the returns between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. Eastern, Nielsen said. News outlets didn't begin calling the race until after 1 a.m. on Wednesday, but the likelihood of Trump's victory was becoming apparent much earlier.

Fox had 13.7 million viewers on election night 2020, when it was also the most popular outlet.

CNN had 4.7 million viewers this year, essentially half of the 9.1 million who watched four years earlier. MSNBC had 5.5 million viewers, down from 7.3 million in 2020, Nielsen said.

Of the broadcast networks, ABC had 5.7 million viewers this year, NBC had 5.3 million and CBS had 3.5 million, Nielsen said.