The Democrats weren’t the only big winners in the midterm elections.
NBC News said the “Kornacki Cam” featuring the network’s chief data analyst, Steve Kornacki, ranked as the top election livestream on YouTube, with a record 29 million views across all platforms. Kornacki’s 10½ hours of continuous online coverage were woven into NBC’s election broadcast, which according to early data from Nielsen led the TV competition Tuesday night.
Final figures showed NBC averaged 6.7 million viewers in prime time, followed by ABC (5.2 million), Fox (4.31 million), CNN (4.1 million), MS NOW (3.7 million) and CBS (2.7 million).
Fox News coverage was simulcast on Fox Business Network, pushing its average up to 4.7 million viewers. The figure is well below the roughly 8 million viewers the two networks scored during the midterm coverage in 2022, as ardent supporters of President Trump likely tuned out of the rough night for the Republicans.
The decline comes a day after Fox Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch told Wall Street analysts that the network is experiencing “viewer fatigue” and watching less. The drop coincides with the precipitous decline in Trump’s approval ratings, which led to the Democratic rout of the Republicans to recapture the House and Senate.
While Fox News was down, every other major network was up over its 2022 coverage. NBC enjoyed the largest gain with 116% and ranked No. 1 on a midterm election night for the first time in 24 years.
Kornacki developed a strong audience following with his no-frills, drill-down into the voting data during his years at cable network MSNBC, which became MS NOW last year ahead of its spinoff this year into a new company, Versant.
After the spinoff, MSNBC and NBC News were split up, and nearly all employees had to choose between working at the progressive-leaning cable news channel or the broadcast network. Kornacki chose to sign with NBC, where he also provides data analysis for the sports division.
NBC News took full advantage of Kornacki’s popularity, featuring him on its Rockefeller Plaza set for the first time.
On YouTube, the livestream reached 6.1 million views and more than 300,000 peak concurrent viewers between 8:30 and 11:30 p.m. Eastern.
Nexstar’s cable network NewsNation doesn’t have the large audiences of its more established competitors, averaging 232,000 viewers for its midterm coverage on Tuesday. But the network was early on the major calls of the night, which were made by Decision Desk HQ, the upstart company that provides voting data to media outlets and corporations.
NewsNation called the House for the Democrats at 9:09 p.m., nearly an hour ahead of NBC. NewsNation gave the Senate majority to Democrats at 11:21 p.m., two minutes ahead of NBC. NewsNation was also first to call the most surprising Democratic Senate wins, including James Talarico of Texas, Annie Andrews of South Carolina and Adam Hamilton of Kansas.
The major networks use the Associated Press and their own decision desks to make election calls. After the infamous slip-up in the 2000 presidential election when Florida was called for George W. Bush and then pulled back, the networks have been far less aggressive in seeking to be first to proclaim a winner.
