Staff Reports
President Biden’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday experienced a significant decline in viewership versus his speech in 2022. Nielsen data showed that only 27.3 million Americans tuned in to listen to Biden’s address, a decrease of 28 percent from the 38.2 million viewers in the previous year. This marked the second lowest viewership in the past thirty years, with only Biden’s unofficially recognized State of the Union address in April 2021 having a lower viewership.
An estimated 27.3 million people watched U.S. President Joe Biden's State of the Union speech, according to Nielsen ratings data from 16 television networks. https://t.co/ZaYLbSpYIC
— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) February 9, 2023
The majority of viewers, 73 percent, were over 55. According to Statista, those 65 and above watch much cable news compared to any other age group, with 32% of them doing so every day. A poll conducted by CNN revealed that 72% of Americans had a positive response to Biden’s statement, with 41 percent having a very positive reaction.
4.69 million Fox News viewers tuned in to see Biden’s address, backed by 4.41 million viewers on ABC News, 3.78 million on NBC, 3.64 million on CBS, 3.55 million on MSNBC, and 2.4 million on CNN.The speech was broadcast on sixteen television networks, with ABC News having the most viewers in the 25-54 age group, at 1.08 million.
Since Nielsen started collecting data in 1993, former President Bill Clinton’s first address to Congress in 1993 had the largest audience with 66.9 million viewers in the past thirty years. Despite a drop in viewership from Biden’s previous year’s speech, it still received a substantial audience and received a positive reaction from the American public.
The preceding article is a summary of an article that originally appeared on The Daily Caller
