Views of the Republican National Convention dropped Wednesday to 17.3 million people for the address by Vice President Mike Pence.
The figure provided by Nielsen is 11% lower than the 19.4 million viewers who watched First Lady Melania Trump speak from the White House Rose Garden on Tuesday.
The total is Monday just above the opening night of the convention of 17 million viewers. Wednesday night’s figure for the GOP is 31% lower than the 24.4 million viewers who watched the third night of the 2016 Republican convention nominating Trump.
The third night of the Democratic National Convention on August 19 was watched by 22.8 million viewers. The program included Senator Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech for the vice presidential nomination.
Viewing conventions on Wednesday may have been diminished by many viewers along the Gulf Coast, set in local coverage of Hurricane Laura, which was hitting the region at the time.
Both the Democratic and Republican conventions stand well under the watch of 2016, as traditional TV viewing has declined significantly among viewers under 50
More people are turning to streaming video platforms to watch some part of the conventions. The Democratic National Committee said last week there were 35 million streams from its convention across various sites and apps.
Fox News was the most-watched TV channel on Wednesday for coverage between 10 and 23:15 Eastern, with an average of 7.66 million viewers, followed by NBC (1.966 million), ABC (1.895 million), CBS (1.781 million) , CNN (1,515 million) and MSNBC (1,480 million).
Fox News, the favorite network of Trump supporters, continued to dominate the competition by winning a 45% share of the convention audience.
Coverage also ran on Fox Business Network, Newsy, Newsmax, CNN and Español and PBS. Nielsen data for those channels will be added to the public total later today.
Along with Pence, speakers in the hour included the daughter-in-law of President Lara Trump; Sam Vigil, whose wife was killed in a carjacking; Clarence Henderson, an activist of the Black Desegregation; and Richard Grenell, former acting director of President Trump.
Trump is scheduled to accept his party’s nomination for a second term Thursday night with a speech from the White House’s South Lawn.
