After an extraordinary run of political news, interest in the presidential election is perking up

abcnews.go.com:

News executives were worried for the first half of the year about consumers expressing relatively little interest in the coming election

After a desultory start to the campaign season, news outlets are starting to see interest in political news perk up because of an extraordinary run of stories over the past few weeks.

The most obvious beneficiary is Fox News Channel, which is ending July with its highest viewership than any month since November 2020, the Nielsen company said. Its audience eclipsed every other network, including broadcasters ABC, CBS and NBC.

Between July 13 and 23, former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt and accepted the Republican Party's presidential nomination. President Joe Biden dropped his bid for re-election, and Vice President Kamala Harris secured the support of enough Democrats to be the party's presidential nominee.

“We just got back and we've been gone, like, a week,” said Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's “The Daily Show” on Monday. “It's been a week, or a decade.”

More than 57 million people read news stories about the campaign on more than 2,000 news sites measured by Taboola over the past 45 days. That's a 56% increase over the previous 45-day period, the company said. Trump had been the No. 1 topic on news sites for most of 2024 until July — when Harris surpassed him, Taboola spokesman Dave Struzzi said.

Cable news ratings for the first six months of 2024 had been roughly flat compared to 2023, and many online news sites have seen diminishing numbers. While cable television ratings have suffered over the past few years as many consumers pull the plug on subscriptions, that was still an ominous sign: News leaders had been hoping a presidential election would result