You're kidding right? EVERYTHING in TV is about ratings Pogo. You don't get the ratings, you don't get the big advertising dollars. A 30 second spot on The Factor will cost you hundreds of thousands more than on the Rachel Maddow show...why? Ratings.Looks like Trump stole Fox's thunder. Not good for those hoping he'd fail at stealing viewers. They hyped this debate more than the FBN one two weeks ago so its pretty obvious his absence had a impact.
Who won the ratings race, Fox News or Donald Trump?
Once again -- "ratings" are completely irrelevant to a political debate.
Ratings are for selling things. If you're not either buying or selling ad time --- they have no meaning whatsoever.
Political debates --- and public service content in general --- isn't put on for "ratings". It's put on, if you really want to know, because Congress, through the FCC, declared decades ago that the airwaves belong to the public, and therefore broadcast licenses are awarded to entities that serve "the public interest, convenience and necessity". To that end said entities will put on the Farm Market report at 4am or the round table debate on the national debt in the wee hours --- simply so they can go back to the FCC at license renewal time and say "we did X number of hours of public service programming".
Never mind that that total makes up a tiny fraction that the greater proportion of the viewership/listenership isn't even aware of it, they count as "brownie points" for the license application.
Ratings, on the other hand, have nothing to do with the above; they tell a Fox News or a CBS or a KRAP-FM how much it can charge for commercial time by mapping out who's watching/listening. Those numbers are pumped up by, above all, fear, loathing and sensationalism (hence the maxim "if it bleeds it leads"). They're pumped up by disasters and terror attacks and innuendo and horrible weather and clowns like Donald Rump. They are NOT pumped up by the Farm Report, the dry roundtable of what's happening in the Chinese economy or a political debate.
In short, airing a political debate is not competing for ratings. And usually it doesn't contain any ads anyway.
This misconception of what ratings mean and what they don't mean is one I have to constantly correct every time some wag wags in here toting the latest Fox ratings as if it's some measure of "approval" of what they're doing. It isn't. Ratings measure attention --- not approval. There's a vital psychological difference.
There's stuff in the world I understand and stuff I don't, but after 35 years in broadcasting this is definitely one of the former.
Now if X number of people sat out a debate because Rump wasn't there, all that effectively tells us is that X number of people would have been more interested in watching circus than in watching issues. It tells us nothing about those issues. And it means absolutely nothing in terms of "who won". Because it isn't a "contest". Even if Rump wants to spin it that way.