Ron Chernow Gives Sam Bee A Run For Her Money At Correspondents’ Dinner But Greg Gutfeld Bests Both

Historian Ron Chernow’s dramatic debut as keynote speaker at the actual White House Correspondents’ Dinner attracted more viewers than Samantha Bee’s Not The White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night.

Chernow’s anticipated unveiling as the adult-in-the-hall alternative to the traditional TV comic entertainer AND the absent President of the United States at the annual dinner drew 952,000 viewers on CNN alone, and another 644K on MSNBC. Chernow’s well received address also was carried on other outlets, including C-SPAN, whose numbers remain a mystery at time of writing.

Meanwhile, Bee’s second crack at providing an alternative to the dinner logged 712K total viewers on its initial TBS airing, at 10 PM ET.

Bee logged 204K viewers in her target 18-49 demographic. In the slightly older news demo, the special averaged 263K viewers.

Chernow, meanwhile, logged 127K CNN viewers in the younger demo, and another 59K on MSNBC. In the 25-54 news age bracket, Chernow snagged 169K CNN viewers and 93K MSNBC viewers.

Those cumed stats put Chernow behind Bee in the younger age bracket and on par with the TBS show host in the news demo.

Meanwhile, Fox News Channel did not engage in correspondents dinner-izing, sticking with Greg Gutfeld’s show in the Saturday time slot.

Gutfeld prevailed.

He ran a lap around Bee and Chernow in overall audience, bagging 1.989 million total viewers. He also logged a slot-winning 328K viewers in the news demo. Among 18-49 year olds, Gutfeld’s 198K viewers was competitive with Bee’s 204K.