By Lisa Richwine
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – More than 50 million people watched Republican U.S. President Donald Trump debate Democratic challenger Joe Biden on the six largest broadcast and cable television networks, according to preliminary Nielsen ratings data released on Friday.
The numbers for the Thursday night face-off fell from initial figures for the pair’s first debate in September. Updated ratings will be released later on Friday.
The figures represent the audience average across Walt Disney Co’s ABC, Viacom Inc’s CBS, Comcast Corp’s NBC and MSNBC, Fox News Channel and CNN, owned by AT&T Inc.
For the September debate, preliminary figures showed 62 million people tuned in on those same networks, CNN said.
During the Thursday night event, Biden renewed his attacks on Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, while Trump leveled unfounded corruption accusations at Biden and his family. It was the last televised face-off before the Nov. 3 election.
Trump initially adopted a more restrained tone than in the first debate, which was quickly derailed by his constant interruptions. Final ratings data for that matchup showed the TV audience averaged 73.1 million, ranking as the second-biggest telecast of the year.
The most-watched presidential debate in U.S. history was a 2016 event between Trump and Hillary Clinton, seen by 84 million TV viewers.
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Jonathan Oatis, Tom Brown and Richard Chang)
