Preliminary Analysis: With less than two weeks until the 2020 presidential election, President Trump and former Vice President Biden took part in the second and final debate of this cycle. After beating NBC in the ratings during the September debate, ABC's broadcast (2.1) tied NBC's (2.1) head-on this time around. The alphabet network fell more than a full point from the last debate (3.2) while the peacock network was only down by six-tenths (2.7). CBS (1.1) completely trailed the other two with their debate telecast despite having the help of a sturdy 'Big Brother' (1.0) lead-in. Nonetheless, CBS was only three-tenths behind the 1.4 it garnered for debate 1. NBC and ABC had dueling debate specials preceding the main event (0.8/0.8) and managed to match each other for that broadcast as well. When it came to 10:30pm debate analysis, ABC (1.4) was a tenth above NBC (1.3) while CBS (0.8) came in a distant third. Fox opted not to air the debate and went with the 'Giants v. Eagles' NFL game (2.1). The game fell into a three-way-tie for top program of the night, alongside the debate broadcasts on ABC and NBC. The CW had steady showings of 'Supernatural' (0.3) and 'The Outpost' (0.1).
Finals Update: NFL: Giants v. Eagles (+1.1), 2020 Presidential Debate coverage on ABC (+0.5), NBC (+0.5) and CBS (+0.2), and Debate Analysis on ABC (+0.2), NBC (+0.3) and CBS (+0.1) adjusted up. Debate Preview Special (-0.1) adjusted down.
