Stormy Daniels Attracts 22 Million Viewers to ‘60 Minutes’<br />The “60 Minutes” episode also had more viewers than the usual editions of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” which averaged 18 million viewers,<br />and came within striking distance of ABC’s telecast last month of the Academy Awards, which had 26.5 million viewers.<br />The El Chapo-focused interview with Sean Penn, in January 2016, drew 20.6 million viewers,<br />and Lesley Stahl’s sit-down with Mr. Trump and his family, soon after he won the presidential election in November 2016, drew 20 million.<br />CBS’s “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday night featuring the pornographic film actress, whose real<br />name is Stephanie Clifford, garnered the highest ratings for the program in almost a decade.<br />The episode was the best performer for “60 Minutes” since the airing of Steve Kroft’s interview with Barack<br />and Michelle Obama after the 2008 election, which had more than 25 million viewers.<br />The interview segment with Ms. Clifford made for a bigger draw than the telecasts<br />of this year’s Grammys (19.8 million) and the Golden Globes (19 million).<br />The segment on Ms. Clifford, who said she had a sexual relationship with Donald J. Trump in 2006<br />and had been offered money to keep it quiet, took up more than half the episode.<br />It drew 22 million viewers, according to Nielsen, more than the much-hyped recent telecasts for the Grammys and the Golden Globes.<br />The CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who joined “60 Minutes” as a correspondent in 2006, conducted the interview.
