Trump-less Fox News Debate Gets Second-Lowest Ratings

The first Republican presidential debate of the season without front-runner Donald Trump generated smaller viewer interest than all but one of this cycle's prior GOP gatherings, according to preliminary Nielsen estimates — but still drew four times as many viewers as Trump's competing event.

In the metered-market overnights, which represent 56 of the nation's largest markets, Fox News Channel's debate from Iowa averaged an 8.4 household rating. This is up vs. the 7.4 overnight rating for the most recent GOP debate, on Fox Business Network earlier this month, but it stands as the second lowest-rated of the six Republican gatherings this cycle.

Nielsen will issue total-viewer estimates later Friday, but it's likely that last night's debate on FNC averaged in the vicinity of 12 million viewers.

By comparison, the combined viewership of CNN and MSNBC, which covered Trump's competing Iowa event last night, appears to be about 3 million or so, according to an analysis by CNN.

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Publishers Notes: Everyone should look at how many ON LINE viewers Trump had of his Veteran gathering/fundraiser.