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Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Thursday. | Getty More than 19 million saw Comey testimony on TV

A congressional hearing rarely attracts much attention, but Thursday's testimony by fired FBI Director James Comey brought major ratings, with nearly 20 million tuning in on television, not including those who watched online.

According to Nielsen ratings, ABC topped all networks, bringing in 3.295 million overall viewers, with CBS close behind with 3.286 million viewers. Fox News was next with 3.096 million viewers, followed by CNN with 3.049 million, NBC with 2.723 million viewers and MSNBC with 2.719 million viewers. Fox Business had 236,000 viewers and CNBC had 184,000.

CNN won the most desirable advertising demo (viewers aged 25 - 54) across all television with 1.019 million, followed by NBC with 859,000.

Every cable, broadcast and business network ran special programming for the hearing, during which Comey accused President Donald Trump of lying, said former Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked him to change his language about the Clinton email investigation, and revealed that he personally sought to leak a memo about his conversations with Trump in order to spur the appointment of a special prosecutor.

The Nielsen numbers don't yet include networks like C-SPAN or online streaming services offered by many networks and websites. Twitter, which partnered with Bloomberg to stream the hearing, said 2.7 million viewers tuned in. Facebook said there were 26 million views while live of Comey-related video.

The interest in the hearings also spilled over into the evening. "Hannity" on Fox had the most overall viewers for the day in basic cable with 3.4 million, while MSNBC, led by Rachel Maddow, won the age 25-54 demo in primetime with an average viewership of 757,000 and Stephen Colbert's "Late Show" on CBS had its best night since its debut in 2015.