An estimated 20 million people watched the first night of the Jan. 6 committee public hearings on Thursday, according to preliminary data from Nielsen.
Twelve of the major broadcast television news networks carried the hearing live between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. ET.
ABC led the primetime coverage of the hearing with 4.8 million viewers while NBC had about 3.6 million viewers and CBS brought in 3.4 million, according to TV Line.
On cable, MSNBC pulled in 4.3 million viewers during the hearing while CNN had 2.7 million.
Fox News, which didn’t cover the two-hour hearing, averaged about 3 million viewers between 8 p.m and 10 p.m. The network relegated live coverage of the hearing to Fox Business Network, which pulled in 223,000 viewers.
Nielsen’s figures included people who watched the hearing on traditional television or streamed through Internet-connected TVs, but they do not capture the full extent of online viewing via social media.
For comparison, Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial in the Senate drew an audience of around 11 million.
The committee has two public hearings scheduled for next week, on Monday and Wednesday. They are expected to begin at 10 a.m. ET.
