The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States was a historic event. The question on everyone's mind is how many people watched it on television. CNN set live TV ratings records during President Donald Trump's inauguration, with nearly 37 million viewers tuning in at some point during the ceremony and speech, according to Nielsen data released Monday. Fox News Channel had 11.8 million viewers and MSNBC had 4.9 million viewers; both also drew their largest ever daytime audiences for an inauguration.. In context, Barack Obama's second inauguration was seen by 20.6 million people in 2009 - down from his first in 2009 which netted 37.8 million. Trump's preliminary audience was also better than Barack Obama's second inauguration. (Note: Nielsen does not measure viewership for web-based streams.) While the audience for Trump's inauguration dwarfs the numbers for any of President Barack Obama's inaugurations, viewers will have