October 16, 2020

Early Results Are In: More People Watched Biden’s Town Hall Than Trump’s

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When 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump held dueling town halls on different networks at the same time, it seemed safe to assume that more people would tune in for reality show presidential pyrotechnics than the even-keeled former vice president discussing policy. But the Nielsen ratings show that most Americans opted to keep their blood pressure low Thursday night.

Biden’s town hall on ABC averaged about 13.9 million viewers, while Trump’s town hall, which aired on three different channels—NBC News, CNBC, and MSNBC—averaged 13.1 million viewers, according to early Nielsen ratings.

The Nielsen ratings count only viewers who watched through their TV sets, not the many thousands who streamed the programs online. The final ratings will be released later this afternoon.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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