By Selome Hailu
An average of 24.6 million viewers watched Donald Trump‘s inauguration as the 47th president of the United States on Monday per Nielsen.
That’s a lower total than what was achieved by both of the two most recent inauguration broadcasts: 27% below the 33.8 million viewers who tuned into Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration in 2021, and 21% below the 31 million who watched Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.
Monday’s total was counted from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET across 15 different networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, Merit Street Media, Telemundo, Univision, CNBC, CNN, CNNe, FOX News Channel, FOX Business Network, MSNBC, Newsmax, NewsNation and PBS. It should be noted that Nielsen’s 2021 and 2017 totals don’t account for the exact same set of networks: Biden’s 33.8 million viewers also tuned in via Estrella, BET, BET Her, HLN, Scripps News (then known as Newsy) and WGNA without contributions from Merit Street Media, Fox Business Network, NewsNation or PBS; Trump’s 31 million viewers in 2017 included some from Galavision and HLN but not Merit Street Media, CNNe, Newsmax, NewsNation or PBS.
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But because such a large proportion of inauguration viewership happens across ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and CNN, which all aired all three inaugurations, it can be assumed that the discrepancies from a few lesser-used cable networks and PBS is negligible.
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Across the broadcast networks, ABC’s coverage was the most-watched, averaging 3.7 million viewers. CBS and NBC followed with totals just above and just below 3.3 million viewers, respectively.
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