Former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson testified on a television hit on Jan. 6

SYRACUSE, NY – Testimony by former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson before the committee on Jan. 6 was a huge hit with television viewers, easily reaching a larger live audience than any of the other four hearings on the day.

Hutchinson’s riveting statement about former President Donald Trump’s temper as plans to cancel the 2020 election fell through was seen by 13.17 million people last week, the company Nielsen said.

That’s a jump of 28% from the 10.25 million who watched the committee’s previous daytime hearing and 23% above the average of the four daytime hearings. The committee’s first hearing, the only one televised in prime time, was watched by 19.4 million people.

The committee had hastily called a public meeting to hear Hutchinson’s testimony after expecting to be free by mid-July. Their leaders built anticipation by attempting to keep their witness’s identity a secret in advance.

Given that many people later heard portions of Hutchinson’s testimony online or in news reports, the actual number of people who heard what she said outnumbered the live coverage.

CBS was the most popular prime-time network last week, averaging 2.7 million viewers. NBC had 2.4 million, ABC had 2.1 million, Fox had 1.6 million, Univision had 1.2 million, Ion Television had 1 million, and Telemundo averaged 900,000.

Fox News Channel was the top-rated cable network during prime time, averaging 2.05 million viewers. MSNBC had 1.31 million, HGTV had 858,000, Hallmark had 730,000, and History had 685,000.

ABC’s World News Tonight led the nightly news ratings race, averaging 7.2 million viewers. NBC’s Nightly News had 6.1 million and CBS Evening News had 4.3 million.