Donald Trump's Inauguration Draws 18% Fewer Viewers Than Barack Obama's in 2009
- by Virginia Carter
- in World Media
- — Jan 23, 2017
He backed up his statement by falsely claiming that 420,000 people used D.C. Metro public transit, compared to 317,000 on the day of Obama's 2009 inauguration.
With no new kid in town, traditionally second inaugurations tend to see lower TV numbers and few, if any, have compared the viewership that Trump's first inauguration drew to the second swearing in of Obama - except Donald Trump.
The figure is based on preliminary data from Nielsen for inauguration coverage that aired from 10 a.m.to 6 p.m. He was up slightly from George W. Bush's first swearing-in 16 years ago, and about 900,000 ahead of Bill Clinton's first inauguration.
The data also showed that CNN had an average of 2.5 million viewers while MSNBC had 1.35 million viewers during the same time slot, according to Bloomberg.
During the oath of office and inaugural address between noon and 12:30 Eastern, the Fox News audience peaked at 11.76 million viewers. ABC had 4.9 million viewers and CBS had 4.6 million.
By those numbers, Trump ranked a ninth, with a 20.1 rating. Earlier this month, he blasted the rebooted "New Celebrity Apprentice", on which he serves as executive producer, because its premiere rating fell short of the standards set by the show when Trump served as its host (and when ratings across television, due to lack of competition, skewed far higher). In 2009, 37.7 million viewers tuned in to watch Obama be sworn-in, a number that plunged to 20.6 million for his second term. "Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got "swamped" (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT", the then-president-elect tweeted.
