When Presidential candidate Donald Trump appeared on “Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace” on October 18, it turned out to be the most-watched broadcast of the show in over six years, logging 1,618,000 total viewers and 471K news-demo viewers. In overall audience, “FNS” jumped 23% compared to the same day last year.
Many industry pundits believe that it is primarily due to Trump that the GOP debates have become the hottest new show on the fall TV schedule — the FNC and CNN debates’ with 24M and 23M viewers, respectively, blew away every new primetime series launch this season. Trump also won Stephen Colbert his third week as host of CBS’ “The Late Show” in overall audience, and won cable TV for Bill O’Reilly the night he appeared on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor.”
The outspoken candidate is even predicting that when he hosts NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” on November 7, the show will get its highest ratings “in a long time.”
The GOP frontrunner’s threats to boycott CNBC’s GOP debate on October 28 unless it’s held to two hours in length, was instant headline news. That’s understandable when the ratings could crumble if the “Trump Show” isn’t part of the night.
