The Senate impeachment trial has taken over most cable news networks but Americans don’t seem to believe the ongoing battle over President Donald Trump’s future is must-see television.
The Associated Press reported Monday that Americans are increasingly tuning out and not in to see their favorite Members of Congress debate whether the president held foreign aid in limbo until Ukrainian officials agreed to investigate his political rivals, or whether what the House impeachment panel compiled in their weeks-long effort is sufficient to vote on whether to keep Trump in office.
“For all the gravity of a presidential impeachment trial, Americans don’t seem to be giving it much weight,” the outlet said Monday.
“As House impeachment managers make their case to remove President Donald Trump from office, voters in several states said in interviews with The Associated Press that they’re only casually following the Senate trial, or avoiding it altogether — too busy to pay close attention, bored of the legal arguments, convinced the outcome is preordained or just plain tired of the whole partisan saga,” the AP continued.
Television ratings are “cratering” according to the Washington Times.
The three major broadcast networks took a ratings hit with their Trump impeachment coverage, drawing fewer viewers than they would have with their regular line-up of soap operas,” they reported over the weekend. “The Nielsen ratings for Wednesday and Thursday showed that ABC, CBS and NBC lost a combined 3 million viewers per day by airing the Senate impeachment trial instead of the daytime soaps, according to TVNewser, despite the impassioned testimony of House impeachment managers like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).”
TV News HQ reported on Twitter that Wednesday’s news coverage of the Senate trial scored fewer viewers than afternoon soap operas.
Impeachment coverage was a ratings disaster for CBS, ABC and NBC this week, who lost millions of viewers by pre-empting their usual daytime soap operas. https://t.co/VXQuev7wNu pic.twitter.com/rvkPk8sYI4
— TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) January 25, 2020
And it’s not just television ratings that are suffering. Web traffic is down, too.
“Benedict Nicholson, managing editor of Newswhip, a company that tracks how people engage with stories across social networks, said its data showed that weekly engagement to web content about impeachment peaked at around 80 million the week of Dec. 16, when the House voted to impeach Trump,” NBC News reported. “Last week, when the Senate trial began, it showed about 22 million social media engagements for impeachment-related coverage through Thursday.”
‘Around the time of the House impeachment vote last month, stories about impeachment averaged about 20 million page views each day,” the AP added. “Last week, impeachment stories drew about 15 million page views daily, according to digital advertising and web tracking company Taboola. Google searches on impeachment have also declined since the House vote.”
And the effect seems to be bipartisan. Americans seem to believe the Senate impeachment trial will end only one way.
“I’ve been watching some really odd stuff just to avoid it,” one viewer in a battleground state told the AP. “In my circle, everybody’s tired of hearing about it. There’s nobody budging. Let’s just agree to disagree.”
“I want to watch something that takes me some place happy,” said another, a 2016 Trump voter. Yet another added that they’ve been tuning in to just about anything other than the Senate impeachment trial just to get away from the news.