TV Ratings: State of the Union trends to decline in early numbers

The State of the Union address attracted a smaller audience than last year’s presidential address to Congress, based on preliminary Nielsen ratings.

President Donald Trump’s 107-minute speech (the longest ever) attracted approximately 27.8 million viewers across the seven most-watched broadcast and cable outlets: ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, the Fox Broadcast Network, MS Now and NBC. That’s roughly 12 percent less than those same networks’ 31.45 million viewers of Trump’s address to Congress last year (which wasn’t technically a State of the Union because it came at the start of the new administration).

Fox News led the way with 9.1 million viewers, far ahead of ABC’s 5.1 million viewers. The latter was the top broadcast network for speeches for the sixth year in a row, beating NBC (3.6 million), CBS (3.3 million) and Fox Broadcast Network (2.1 million). MS Now (2.4 million) beat CNN (2.2 million).

Fox News also topped the core news demographic of adults 25-54 with 1.47 million viewers, followed by ABC (1.22 million), NBC (1.02 million) and CBS (815,000). CNN (655,000) led ahead of Fox (560,000) and MS Now (323,000) in the demo.

Last year’s speech attracted a total of 36.63 million viewers across 15 broadcast and cable networks. Final ratings for Tuesday’s title, which will include both additional outlets and Nielsen’s big data measurement, will be released Thursday afternoon. The above numbers may undergo some adjustments in the finals.

The State of the Union declining a year after a president takes office is fairly common in modern history. After their initial addresses to Congress shortly after taking office, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Trump in his first term attracted a smaller audience at the State of the Union address the following year. The exceptions are George W. Bush in 2002, a few months after the September 11 attacks, and Joe Biden in 2022, whose first address to Congress came much later than usual (late April 2021) due to health restrictions during the height of the Covid pandemic.

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