Nearly 20 million people watched Thursday night’s first hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol across broadcast and cable news, according to preliminary ratings figures from Nielsen. Each of the major broadcast television news networks preempted their regularly scheduled programming on Thursday to show continuous live coverage of the two-hour hearings. On cable, MSNBC pulled in a whopping 4.1 million viewers during the hearings, nearly four times what the network averages on a typical weeknight. Friday’s preliminary figures are likely to grow and do not include viewers who watched the hearing via streaming service online through YouTubeTV or other platforms. A reported 9 million people watched former President Trump’s impeachment trial in 2020 on a typical day during those proceedings on Capitol Hill.
