TV Ratings: 29M Viewers Watch Biden’s Oval Office Address on Ending Campaign

President Joe Biden’s Oval Office address on ending his re-election campaign Wednesday drew a large TV audience.

Nearly 29 million people — 28.9 million, to be precise — watched the 15-minute speech at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT across 15 broadcast and cable networks, according to final same-day Nielsen ratings.

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ABC had the largest single-network audience for Biden’s address with 6.82 million viewers. Fox News drew 5.37 million viewers, followed by CBS (4.22 million), NBC (3.82 million), MSNBC (3.53 million), CNN (2.53 million), the Fox broadcast network (1.62 million) and Fox Business (145,000). Scripps News, Telemundo, Univision, CNNe, Newsmax, NewsNation and PBS accounted for the remaining viewers.

ABC also led among the key news demographic of adults 25-54, drawing 1.45 million viewers in that age group. Fox News had 950,000 viewers in the key demo, beating out the 897,000 for CBS and 729,000 for NBC. CNN averaged 654,000 adults 25-54, followed by MSNBC (486,000), Fox broadcast (482,000) and Fox Business (33,000).

Biden’s Oval Office address was the latest of several big TV news events related to the 2024 presidential campaign in the past couple of weeks. An attempted assassination of Republican nominee Donald Trump, the Republican convention and Biden’s withdrawal from the campaign have all drawn sizable audiences.

July 25, 2 p.m. Updated with final ratings figures.

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