ABC's David Muir sees newscast ratings decline after controversial debate performance

ABC’s "World News Tonight" anchor David Muir may have driven away some viewers after the Disney-owned network irked conservatives during last week’s presidential debate.

Muir and co-moderator Linsey Davis fact-checked former President Trump five times without ever correcting Vice President Kamala Harris, prompting a plethora of conservatives to suggest the debate wasn’t fair. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America even called for a correction after Davis made an abortion claim made during the debate during one of the fact-checks on Trump that the group said was "100% inaccurate."

Muir’s "World News Tonight" averaged 6.7 million viewers on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, the three episodes following the debate, after averaging 7.6 million in 2024 leading up to the debate.

The 12% drop in viewers for "World News Tonight" is more significant than slight declines "CBS Evening News" and "NBC Nightly News" saw when comparing the three episodes following ABC’s debate to the year-to-date totals, although Muir’s newscast remained the No. 1 broadcast evening newscast.

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While it’s unclear if Trump supporters have tuned out ABC’s newscast on the heels of the debate, the former president has blasted it as "one-sided." Trump told Fox News that he believed Harris should have been fact-checked on a variety of claims.

"Every one of them should have been questioned by David Muir, who I've lost a lot of respect for. Everyone's lost respect for him," Trump said last week.

"It was so ... one-sided," he continued. "It was one against three."

ABC News defenders have pointed to a two-week blackout of Disney-owned stations on DirectTV because of a carriage disagreement from Sept 1-14. However, the weekday episodes of "World News Tonight" that aired prior to the debate were down only 8% from the program's year-to-date totals compared to a 12% drop for the episodes that aired after the debate.

Davis admitted in a post-debate interview that her fact-checking of Trump was influenced by the CNN debate that went disastrously for President Biden in June. 

"People were concerned that statements were allowed to just hang and not [be] disputed by the candidate Biden, at the time, or the moderators," Davis told the Los Angeles Times last week.

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On Sunday, ABC News' Martha Raddatz even noted that Harris was wrong when she said there is "not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world." 

"Our fact-checkers found that to be false," Raddatz said.

"There are currently 900 U.S. military personnel in Syria, 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq. All have been under regular threat from drones and missiles for months. We also have action in the Red Sea," Raddatz continued. "Also, every single day, the Navy SEALs, Delta Forces special operators can be part of any sort of deadly raid."

Muir and Davis failed to correct Harris in front of the debate’s massive audience of nearly 70 million people.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect that weekday episodes of ABC’s "World News Tonight" that aired in September during the DirectTV blackout, prior to the debate, were down 8% from the program's year-to-date totals. An earlier version stated it was down 3%. 

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Fox News Digital’s Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.