October 16, 2020

Early Results Are In: More People Watched Biden’s Town Hall Than Trump’s

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When 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump held dueling town halls on different networks at the same time, it seemed safe to assume that more people would tune in for reality show presidential pyrotechnics than the even-keeled former vice president discussing policy. But the Nielsen ratings show that most Americans opted to keep their blood pressure low Thursday night.

Biden’s town hall on ABC averaged about 13.9 million viewers, while Trump’s town hall, which aired on three different channels—NBC News, CNBC, and MSNBC—averaged 13.1 million viewers, according to early Nielsen ratings.

The Nielsen ratings count only viewers who watched through their TV sets, not the many thousands who streamed the programs online. The final ratings will be released later this afternoon.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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