President Biden’s first speech to a joint session of Congress drew 26.9 million viewers, according to figures from ratings company Nielsen released Thursday.
The numbers include viewers watching Biden’s speech on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Telemundo, Univision, PBS, CNBC, CNN, Fox Business, Fox News, MSNBC, Newsmax, NewsNation and Newsy.
The audience Wednesday night was a roughly 43.6 percent drop from the approximately 47.7 million who tuned in to former President Trump’s first address to members of the House and Senate in 2017.
Biden’s speech on Wednesday was delivered to a crowd of roughly 200 people, which was significantly slimmed down in order to implement COVID-19 precautions.
Nielsen did not announce how the numbers broke down for individual networks. Deadline had previously reported that ABC had won the ratings battle, followed by MSNBC, NBC and CBS.
Ratings for CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have all declined since Biden took office, as have ratings for the evening news programs of ABC, NBC and CBS, according to Nielsen statistics.
– Updated at 6:31 p.m. with new information from Nielsen