Depends upon how the media frame it

Tiger Beat on the Potomac email thingie again:

• Asked whether the events of Jan. 6 would affect how they vote in the midterms, 32% of voters said it would have a major impact, 18% said it would have a minor impact and 50% said it would have no impact.
• Asked how much of the first hearing they watched live last week, 14% said they watched the primetime hearing in full, 25% said they watched some of it and 60% said they didn’t watch any of it.

Our Secret Scissorhead deep inside one of the big networks did some follow-up for us on the widely reported 20M or so people who watched the first Jan. 6 Committee hearing last Thursday (Lightly edited/formatted for clarity and emboldening is mine):

12 networkss carried the hearings:

1. ABC
2. CBS
3. NBC
4. MSNBC
5. CNN
6. CNBC
7. CNN en espanol
8. Fox Business
9. Newsmax
10. Newsnation
11. C-span
12. PBS

Twelve networks carried the hearings but there is only information on viewership from 10 of them: PBS’ ratings comes in a week later and C-Span is not rated by Nielsen.

Now for the viewership, but first we need a definition of what that means: Average means for any minute of the 8-10 PM coverage, 20 million were watching (some minutes higher, some lower but an average minute was 20 million)

• Average for the 10 networks [summed together] was 20 million viewers.
• A typical night for those 10 networks is 13.6 million

So the audience was +47% more than usual.

• The total number of different people who watched at least some portion of the hearings in one of the 10 channels was 43 million viewers.
• A typical night for those ten networks is 37.5 million so +15% more people tuned in than usual.
• A viewer counted if you watched at least 1 minute.
• 1/6 of the audience watched on more than one network
• The average number of minutes watched by any one person was 67.5 (typical is 55.3).

The range varies from 18 minutes average on Newsnation to 93 minutes average on MSNBC. CNN was second with 62 minutes average

This has a huge engaged audience despite what the press says. And remember:  it doesn’t even count PBS,  C-Span or anyone streaming.

So this was a YUGE event. Anyone saying that it didn’t move the needle (Hi Politico!) is either lying or does not understand the numbers.