TV Ratings: Trump and Biden ’60 Minutes’ Interviews Draw Almost 17 Million Viewers

Donald Trump’s contentious interview with veteran “60 Minutes” host Lesley Stahl, as well as Joe Biden’s less eventful sit-down, scored the show its largest audience since 2018.

The dual Biden and Trump interviews, the latter of which the President cut short, drew a total of 16.8 million total viewers on CBS and scored a 2.4 rating among adults 18-49, per Nielsen time adjusted fast national numbers. That represents the most viewers to tune in since the infamous Stormy Daniels interview from March two years ago. During the Trump interview, Stahl grilled the President on his coronavirus response.

The strong “60 Minutes” performance was likely due in part to the fact it was pre-empted by an NFL game. However, it still managed to put up those impressive numbers up against “Sunday Night Football” and the World Series.

Speaking of the football, a doozy of a game between the Arizona Cardinals and the Seattle Seahawks averaged around 12 million total viewers for NBC. Fox’s coverage of game 5 of the World Series averaged a 1.8 rating and 7.2 million viewers across the night. After somehow squandering a lead in the previous game on Saturday, the Los Angeles Dodgers took control once again, emerging 4-2 victors over the Tampa Bay Rays on Sunday night to leave themselves one win away from the title. Both the “SNF” and World Series numbers are due to adjustment given the nature of live sports.

Meanwhile over on ABC, “Supermarket Sweep” dipped by 20% from its premiere last week to end up with a 0.8 rating and 3.6 million total viewers this time around. Prior to that, a new episode of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” scored a 0.7 and 4.7 million viewers. Jimmy Kimmel’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” came in at a 0.5 and 3.4 million pairs of eyeballs, followed by “Card Sharks” at a 0.3 and 2.2 million.

“Local” and “Pandora” both came in at a 0.1 rating for the CW, with the former drawing just under 600,000 viewers and the latter only 344,000.

Univision and Telemundo both averaged a 0.2 rating across the night. The 2011 Kevin James pic “Zookeeper” averaged around 1 million total viewers for Univision.