Trump inauguration sees TV viewership decline from 2009

Donald Trump’s inauguration as president on Friday was a TV event, with approximately 30.6 million people tuning in to watch, however, viewership was down from President Obama’s first inauguration in 2009, which averaged nearly 38 million viewers.

According to preliminary ratings data from Nielsen, overall viewership across NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC was down from 2009, and up slightly from President George W. Bush’s first inauguration in 2001, which averaged 29 million viewers. The ratings were up significantly from President Obama’s second inauguration in 2013, and from Bush’s second inauguration in 2005, which both averaged around 16 million viewers.

From 11 a.m.- 4 p.m., when all the broadcast and cable channels were in rolling coverage, Fox News averaged 8.7 million viewers, NBC 5.9 million viewers, ABC 4.9 million viewers, CBS 4.6 million viewers, CNN 2.6 million viewers, MSNBC 1.4 million viewers, Univision 1.3 million viewers and Telemundo 739,000 viewers.

The ratings provided by Nielsen do not include anyone that may have streamed the coverage online, nor do they include anyone that may have watched on channels like C-SPAN. Millions more people probably tuned in when factoring viewership fro those sources, though data was not immediately available. Final numbers will come in on Monday.

The big winner among the TV networks was Fox News Channel, which had more viewers than any of its broadcast or cable competition. Fox averaged nearly 10.5 million viewers from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. (the full inauguration ceremony), while CNN averaged just over three million viewers, and MSNBC averaged 1.4 million viewers.

Among the business networks: Fox Business led the way with 523,000 viewers, while CNBC averaged 305,000 viewers.

Compared to 2009, Fox News viewership more than doubled, while ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and CNN all saw ratings declines. All of the networks were up compared to 2013.