Thursday's Republican presidential debate will go down as CNN's highest-rated program ever.
Update: Final ratings numbers came in a bit higher than the early estimates. TheWrap reports that 22.9 million people tuned into Thursday's GOP debate. that's still a couple million less than Fox News Channel's broadcast of the first GOP debate.
Previously:
According to early numbers, the GOP debate scored a 4.7 household rating. That amounts to nearly 20 million viewers for the 3-hour event, according to TheWrap.
That's still about four million less viewers than the highly rated firstc GOP debate brought in to Fox News in August.
Previously, CNN’s all-time high was the 8 million viewers who watched Barack Obama debate Hillary Clinton in ’08, reported Deadline.
CNN's three hour debate had created much buzz before it aired, because Republican candidate Donald Trump dared the news network to donate its proceeds to charity. CNN didn't respond to Trump's request.
The 3-hour debate included the ability for Trump's many opponents to address the the statements he has made about them over the course of his campaign so far.
The next Republican debate will air Wednesday, October 28 on CNBC.
