Television ratings for Tuesday's debate

By Richard K. Barry

Here's a good news / bad news story. It would appear that more people watched Tuesday night's presidential debate than the first debate two weeks ago. Unfortunately, a lot of people watched on Fox News.

According to The Hollywood Reporter:

Nielsen figures have FNC's telecast of the town hall debate matching its highest ratings ever (Sarah Palin and Joe Biden's 2008 vice presidential debate) with 11.1 million viewers. On par with that record, FNC also scored a demo win with 3.46 million adults 25-54.

Though its returns are shy of broadcast competition in NBC and ABC, it also topped CBS.
CNN and MSNBC once again switched ranking for the debate. After CNN took the first debate in both viewers and the demo, and MSNBC reclaimed its runner-up status with last week's veep showdown, CNN was once again in second place with 5.77 million viewers and 2.58 million in the demo. MSNBC had 4.88 million total viewers and 1.9 million in adults 25-54.

The good news is that a lot of people watched President Obama kick Romney's ass. The bad news is that if they were watching Fox News the commentary was telling them to ignore what their eyes saw and their ears heard.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)