CNN's town hall with President Joe Biden yielded to Fox News and MSNBC in the cable news prime-time ratings race, data from the US company Nielson Media Research has revealed.
The Biden town hall speech drew an average of 1.46 million viewers between 8 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. on Wednesday. It is a 58 percent drop in viewership from the previous CNN town hall with Biden this past February, which gained 3.5 million sets of eyeballs.
The same 75-minute period on Wednesday saw Fox News drawing an average of 2.76 million viewers for "Tucker Carlson Tonight" and the first part of "Hannity".
MSNBC held second position among the big three cable networks, pulling in an average of 1.47 million viewers for "All in with Chris Hayes" and the first portion of "The Rachel Maddow Show".
CNN also fell behind during primetime hours, between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., and only saw 1.28 million viewers as compared to Fox's 2.36 million and MSNBC's 1.63 million. The stats were first released by Fox News.
Fox News also won primetime Wednesday night, with an average of 2.36 million viewers, compared to 1.63 million for MSNBC and 1.28 million for CNN, according to Nielson Media Research estimates.
During the CNN town hall speech, Biden did not think twice before making confusing and misleading answers related to face masks, national security issues, and COVID-19 vaccine approval. At one point, he went even further by making a false statement that inoculated Americans can't contract the coronavirus.