Over the past week President Trump’s impeachment hearings have been the center conversation for all news outlets and late-night talk shows. Though many have deemed the hearings boring and not worth watching. Many people have been tuning into them. The hearings began last Tuesday, and since then all of the stations airing the hearings have seen a spike in ratings.
The impeachment hearings are continuous, so all cable news networks have cut their advertising and commercials down almost 60%. The hearings air on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday . For all cable networks the weekday is the most important time for commercials and advertising. However, the increase in viewership has been able to make up for the drop in advertising.
Unlike regularly scheduled programming the hearings do not have a set run time. This means that networks aren’t certain about the amount of time they have to cut out in order to air the full hearing, nor are they aware of the time in which they can begin airing advertisements again. Viewership within news networks that have aired the impeachments hearings have risen from 40% to 45% versus daytime periods in the past few months.
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