It has been a big week for global politics, with Donald Trump finally having sat down for his pretty historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. On the TV side of things, Fox News' Sean Hannity had his own reasons to celebrate, as his Monday night interview with Donald Trump was a huge winner, turning Hannity into the most-watched program of the night across both broadcast and cable networks. It wasn't a complete victory with the actual ratings, but it was still something to be proud of.
With many in the U.S. keeping a close eye on everything that was happening in North Korea for Donald Trump's visit, it was perhaps no surprise that Hannity came out of Monday night the big winner in terms of total viewership. When the final tallies came in, Fox News could celebrate Hannity pulling in a whopping 5.90 million viewers to see what Trump had to say about the talks about dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapon capabilities.
For comparison's sake, ABC's The Bachelorette was the most-watched show across broadcast TV on the night, and it drew 5.54 million viewers for its two-hour telecast. (Meanwhile, CBS' rerun of Mom came in third place with 4.93 million.) So Hannity won out by a margin of just over 350,000 people, give or take, which is a close but still commanding victory for the cable news show. Donald Trump had a lot to do with that, of course. Last Monday's Hannity, for instance, brought in 3.31 million people, so there's definitely no mystery behind the bigger stats.
But even though it toppled the competition when it came to total viewers, Hannity failed to get the biggest key demographic ratings. Monday night's interview earned a 0.8 rating in viewers 18-49 years old, which is very respectable for a primetime cable news show, and around 1.48 million of the full Hannity audience fell into the key news-age demographic of 25-54-year-olds. But here's where The Bachelorette could start to boast, since it got a 1.4 rating in the 18-49 demo, with over 2 million people turning in from the 25-54 demographic. Still, Hannity was #2 in demo ratings, with new episodes of series like So You Think You Can Dance, Supergirl and Elementary all falling short.
Getting the President of the United States on one's show is always going to be a win, especially for Fox News, for all the obvious reasons. And Hannity wasn't the only show that was celebrating the Monday night results. That show served as a stellar lead-in for The Ingraham Angle, hosted by Laura Ingraham, whose own mini-controversies in the past led to spiked ratings. The Ingraham Angle's latest episode was watched by 4.56 million people, and it earned a 0.6 18-49 demo rating.
Hannity airs weeknights on Fox News at 9:00 p.m. ET, and you can bet Sean Hannity and his producers are going to be angling to get Donald Trump back on the show as soon as possible. In the meantime, head to our summer premiere schedule to see the new and returning shows hitting primetime soon.
