A raucous Republican Party debate on Thursday appears to
have drawn the biggest U.S. television audience of 2016, according to early
ratings data, but viewership was well below the record U.S. presidential debate
audience set last August.
Fox News Channel said on Friday that the debate among
Republican front-runner Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and John Kasich
drew an 11.5 rating in the top 56 cities in the United States.
That is higher than the last Republican Party debate on Feb.
25 that was aired on cable channel CNN and Telemundo and which translated into
a TV audience of 14.5 million. Republican debates have drawn much higher TV audiences
in this U.S. presidential cycle than those involving Democrats.
Figures for the size of the TV audience on Thursday will be
released by Nielsen later on Friday.
The debate was the four remaining candidates' first
face-to-face encounter since Super Tuesday nominating contests this week gave
extra momentum to Trump but did not knock out his rivals.
Fox News Channel holds the record for the largest audience
for a non-sports cable TV program when some 24 million Americans tuned in
August 2015 for the first of the U.S. presidential debates.
At Thursday's debate, Trump's rivals assailed him for
shifting positions on the issues, but said in the end they would reluctantly
support him if he were their party's nominee.
