(FiveNation.com)- According to Nielsen, the live coverage that Newsmax provided of former President Donald Trump’s rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Saturday outperformed Fox News’s coverage.
During the address at the Trump event, Newsmax was the third most viewed cable network, with a viewership that was so huge that it even eclipsed the combined numbers of CNN and MSNBC, pulling in more than 21% of both networks’ viewers.
Nielsen also claimed that Newsmax’s overall event coverage attracted more than 1.9 million people, with the channel’s audience for Trump’s speech alone reaching over 1.7 million.
It is estimated that an additional 1.2 million viewers tuned in to Newsmax’s coverage of the event via the network’s mobile application and over-the-top (OTT) streaming platforms such as Samsung+ and Roku, bringing the total number of viewers to more than 3 million.
While more than 1.03 million people watched Newsmax during Trump’s speech, only 942,000 people watched Fox News during the same time period.
The ratings for Newsmax were even more astounding when one considers that the network is available in 20 million fewer homes than Fox News, but it still managed to beat out the cable giant in terms of viewership.
Only 406,000 viewers tuned in to CNN during the rally, while 444,000 people watched MSNBC.
Trump didn’t hold back any punches in his first arena appearance since the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago residence. He used the opportunity to respond to President Joe Biden’s own speech, which had been delivered earlier in the week from Philadelphia.
Trump referred to the remarks made by President Biden as “divisive” and stated that both Biden and the Department of Justice are the “real enemies of the people.”
In addition, Trump was there to bolster Republican candidates Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano, both of whom he had previously supported and endorsed in the Republican primary elections.
The speech coverage was broadcast from six in the evening to ten in the evening Eastern time, and Newsmax was in the top three among all basic cable channels during that period, coming in third behind ESPN and the Hallmark Channel.
