Photo taken in Arlington, Virginia, the United States, on Oct. 15, 2020 shows ABC live stream of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's town hall event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

It was "a result virtually no one in the TV business expected," said a CNN report.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17  -- U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's town hall on ABC drew 14.1 million viewers on Thursday night, surpassing the Nielsen ratings for President Donald Trump's town hall on NBC, according to data from Nielsen Media Research on Friday.

Trump's event, aired across NBC and its sibling cable channels of MSNBC and CNBC in the same hour, drew 13.5 million viewers altogether.

It was "a result virtually no one in the TV business expected," said a CNN report.

Before the competing town halls, it had been widely expected that Trump would score a higher Nielsen rating, an estimate of the total number of viewers for a particular television program, than the former vice president since Biden's town hall only aired on ABC but the president's also appeared on NBC's sibling cable channels.