Live-plus-same-day Nielsen data for Wednesday, September 18 has arrived, and the news is quite positive for Fox News Channel’s Gutfeld!
Wednesday’s episode, featuring former President Trump, averaged nearly 4.9 million total viewers in the 10 p.m. ET hour. Not only was that the largest primetime audience for the night across broadcast and cable (edging CBS’ Survivor‘s 4.72 million total live-plus-same-day viewer average), but it represents the largest total live-plus-same-day audience for an episode of the show in its three-year history. Wednesday’s Gutfeld! also averaged 744,000 Adults 25-54 (TV news’ target demo) with 460,000 P18-49 (entertainment TV’s key demo). The aforementioned Survivor and Big Brother averaged more viewers under 55 on Wednesday than Gutfeld!
Wednesday’s episode, which also featured panelists and Fox News personalities Kat Timpf, Tyrus and Emily Compagno, was taped in front of a live studio audience before the Republican presidential nominee headed to Long Island for a campaign rally later in the day.
Although this was Trump’s first in-studio appearance on Gutfeld!, he’s friendly with the Fox News host. Recently, cameras caught Gutfeld speaking with Trump on his cell phone as the show returned from commercial break.
A longtime media personality, Trump was once a regular on late-night TV (he logged 30+ appearances with David Letterman alone). However, he hasn’t made a guest appearance on any of the traditional late night shows since 2016 — when Jimmy Fallon infamously tussled the future president’s hair on The Tonight Show.
Benefiting from a presidential election campaign, and a 10 p.m. ET timeslot, Gutfeld! is having a terrific year from a viewership standpoint. The late-night-style cable news program set a record in total viewers for a quarter in Q2 of this year with 2.3 million, and continues to trend in the right direction. In fact, for the third quarter to date, Gutfeld! has averaged 2.7 million total viewers and 408,000 in the 25-54 news demo, per Nielsen live-plus-same-day data; and the show is on track to achieve its most-watched year ever.
