RNC ratings down slightly over 2020, but final night outperformed previous convention

The final night of the 2024 Republican National Convention was the most watched evening of the gathering, but overall TV viewership was down slightly. 

Viewership between 10 p.m. eastern July 18, 2024, and around 12:15 a.m. the following morning racked up an estimated average of 25.38 million viewers across 14 networks tracked by Nielsen.

That was a 7% bump over the final night of the 2020 GOP convention. Viewership was most heavy from 10:45 to 11 p.m., which fell early in Trump’s 90-minute speech.

Ratings for Monday, July 15, 2024, and Wednesday, July 17, 2024, were also up over 2020.

However, the numbers for Tuesday, July 16, 2024, saw a marked decline over the second night of the 2020 convention. For 2024, the night was scheduled opposite an MLB All-Star game, which likely drew some eyeballs away from the events in Milwaukee that evening.

Only 14.81 million viewers tuned in on average that night, which was drop of 24% over the same night of 2020’s convention.

The significant dip on July 16 was enough to pull down the averages to 19.07 million, which feel short of 2020’s average of 19.39 million by a hair.

Fox’s conservative cable channel easily lead the ratings for the RNC, with 9.21 million people tuning in July 18. NBC had 3.89 million, ABC had 2.79 million, CNN came in at 1.97 million, CBS had 1.91 million and MSNBC registered 1.19 million, the lowest among the major broadcast and cable news networks.

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72% of the convention audience July 18 were over the age of 55. That comes out to 18.36 million viewers. The convention’s other evenings saw a similar portion of viewership in that age range.

None of the ratings data above includes streaming figures, which are not consistently publicly available.