Last Debate’s Rating Hits 8-Year High
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Monday’s presidential debate drew a combined 44.6 rating and 68% of the television audience to the ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC networks, according to figures released Tuesday by the A.C. Nielsen Co., making it the highest-rated debate since the Oct. 21, 1984, meeting between then-President Ronald Reagan and Democratic challenger Walter F. Mondale, which had a 46.
About 88 million people watched at least a portion of the debate on the four commercial broadcast networks, according to ABC, 7 million more than the Oct. 11 debate and 4 million more than the one on Oct. 15.
An additional 2.5 million households were tuned in to coverage on the Cable News Network, and more watched on PBS, C-SPAN and the Spanish-language network Univision. The latter figures will be available later.
This year’s three presidential debates averaged a 41.6 rating on the major broadcast networks, a 14.3% increase over the 36.4 the two 1988 debates averaged.
A rating is the percentage of the nation’s households with televisions tuned in to a particular program, with each point currently equivalent to 931,000 households.
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