Football, Basketball Beat Inauguration in TV Ratings
by EG
Coverage of last week's presidential inauguration dominated cable ratings for the week, but it couldn't claim the most-watched single program title. That honor goes to an NBA game that edged out Donald Trump in terms of viewership among prized younger viewers.
The Monday-night game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors on TNT was the highest-rated cable program for the week with 2.324 million viewers in the 18-49 age demographic. The game narrowly moved ahead of Fox News Channel's noon-1pm coverage of the inauguration, which drew 2.316 million 18-49 viewers.
The only network to make the top ten for its inauguration coverage was the conservative-leaning Fox News, whose coverage took the second, third, fourth and sixth slots with individual hours of its coverage. Also elbowing into the top six was VH1's Love & Hip Hop at number five.
The update on actual factual bragging rights for the inauguration is as follows:
Donald Trump's inauguration was the fifth-highest rated inauguration in the era of TV ratings.
It was the highest-rated programming hour of January 20, 2017, narrowly beating an episode of Blue Bloods on CBS, in terms of total viewership.
It was the second-highest-rated hour on cable TV for the week behind the NBA game.
The total day-long viewership of the inauguration across all networks was 30.6 million. That puts it in third place for the week behind the NFL On FOX NFC Championship game and Fox's NFL post-game show.