The US elections also determine media coverage in Germany. ZDF was able to secure the best TV ratings on election night.
The battle for the White House is close and dominates global reporting. In this country, too, the TV stations have focused on the US presidential election. On election night, the ZDF was able to achieve the best quota with the program "The Night of Decision" after midnight German time and reached an average of 870,000 viewers. According to the media magazine "DWDL", that is a market share of 15.6 percent of the total audience.
The election reporting in the first began at 11:10 p.m. The average reach was 970,000 viewers, slightly higher than on ZDF. However, due to the earlier beginning, this is "not easily comparable". For the total audience, the market share was lower with an average of 11.9 percent compared to ZDF. ZDF also scored points with "Markus Lanz" from 11 p.m. The talk show had 1.91 million viewers, so that the broadcaster clearly outperformed the competition between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m.
RTL scored with the "RTL Nachtjournal" at midnight. The show achieved a 13.6 percent market share in the target group. The following "Nachtjournal Spezial" was able to book half a million viewers, which makes a market share of 11.1 percent.
"The Masked Singer" scores at prime time
At prime time, the US election was not yet the number one topic among German viewers. 2.86 million viewers saw the program "ZDF Special: America Votes – Trump or Biden" on ZDF. This corresponds to a market share of 8.3 percent of the total audience. With "The Masked Singer", ProSieben clearly took the win in the target group of 14 to 49 year olds with a market share of 22.4 percent. Over 3.2 million viewers tuned in. According to "meedia", this results in a market share of 11.5 percent of the total audience.