Thursday night’s primetime rollout of the massively hyped select committee on the events of January 6, 2021, failed to capture the attention of the nation as much as Democrats hoped, posting lackluster ratings despite wall-to-wall coverage on every major network with the exception of Fox News.

According to the early ratings figures from Nielsen Media Research, nearly 20 million viewers tuned in to see the Nancy Pelosi’s hand-picked kangaroo court conduct its trial of former President Donald J. Trump in absentia, a number that is being touted as a smashing success by media outlets that are in the bag for the Democratic Party, but when given some context isn’t nearly as impressive as it seems.

For example, the three major television networks, ABC, NBC and CBS, all of which pre-empted their regular schedule in order to feature the big event drew around 11 million viewers combined, far fewer than would normally tune in for their nightly newscasts.