OPINION:
Hillary Clinton’s 11-hour appearance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi vexed some people and elated others. But the Democratic front runner’s marathon testimony about the 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya brought in a very large audience for Fox News in particular.
“During Thursday’s coverage of the Benghazi hearing, FOX News Channel far surpassed all news networks in both total day and in primetime as the most-watched network with both total viewers and adults 25-54,” the network announced Friday, citing Nielsen numbers.
Fox News presented live coverage of the hearing itself during the day but reverted back to its regular programming during early primetime. The total audience for daytime coverage averaged 1.6 million viewers, easily doubling both CNN, which drew 690,000, and MSNBC which had 778,000.
In the primetime talk and analysis programming that followed, FOX News clocked 2.5 million viewers, easily outpacing CNN at 1.2 million and MSNBC at 1.4 million.
Bill O’Reilly was the ratings kingpin, however. His 8 p.m. “The O’Reilly Factor” drew 3.1 million.
• Jennifer Harper can be reached at jharper@washingtontimes.com.
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