It’s been revealed today that CNN’s debate last night between Trump and Biden drew a massive number of viewers, to the tune of 48 million!

How do those numbers break down? CBS News tell us:

CNN drew 9.04 million television viewers to its flagship channel, CNN Espanol and HLN, the network said on Friday. Fox News drew 8.8 million viewers, ABC News had 8.7 million and MSNBC drew 4.9 million viewers, according to the network.

The first presidential debate of 2024 generated more than 30 million views on CNN’s digital properties and on YouTube. “Across CNN’s digital platforms, the debate was CNN’s biggest debate ever and tied with our biggest live stream event ever with 2.3 million concurrent live views at 9:47 p.m,” CNN stated.

While 48 million across all platforms is an enormous number of viewers for CNN, it really doesn’t compare to debates from 2020 and 2016.

CBS News continues:

The nearly 48 million who watched Thursday night’s debate on TV marks a 35% decline from 2020, when more than 73 million people watched the first debate between Biden and Trump across all TV networks. In 2016, a record 84 million people watched the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Trump.

That’s shocking to me. The 35% drop from 2020 tells us just how many people aren’t happy with either candidate and just aren’t interested in watching a debate between them.

But even so, that 48 million represents to me a massive amount of people that all saw Biden self-destruct last night in a way that the media hasn’t let them see before. And that’s a big deal.