Public interest in the story continues to climb, according to new data out Wednesday morning from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, with 38 percent of study respondents saying they followed the story very closely last week, up from 34 percent the previous week. The debt talks were the top story for both the public and the news media both weeks.

Interest in the debt talks was even higher than in the government shutdown fight in April at the roughly equivalent point. A week before that deadline, only 30 percent of respondents said they were following that debate closely, though interest spiked to 47 percent during the weekend before the deadline.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last week found similarly strong engagement on the issue, with 55 percent of respondent saying that failing to raise the debt ceiling would be a serious problem, and only a quarter saying they still didn’t know enough about the issue to make a decision.

That interest began to be reflected over the weekend, after the period that Pew measured for its report. As the debt negotiations got hot and heavy, the media organizations that covered them the most saw a considerable boost in their audience.

All cable news channels saw higher audience numbers last weekend than the previous weekend.

Fox News led the pack, mentioning “debt ceiling” 101 times over the weekend, according to TV Eyes, and seeing its total viewership jump to 949,000 on Saturday and 942,000 on Sunday from 741,000 and 795,000, respectively, the previous week, according to Nielsen.

CNN covered the debt ceiling story the second-most, mentioning “debt ceiling” 89 times last weekend and seeing total viewership jump to 622,000 on Saturday and 464,000 on Sunday from 402,000 and 386,000 the previous week.

MSNBC mentioned the topic 50 times, and saw total viewership up last weekend to 464,000 on Saturday and 357,000 on Sunday from 345,000 and 378,000, respectively, the previous week.

The debt story also helped propel POLITICO to its best weekend traffic numbers ever. Saturday was the third-highest on record, with 2.5 times the average Saturday traffic, while Sunday was the highest on record, with 3.5 times the average Sunday traffic.

On Monday night, when President Barack Obama broke into normal primetime programming to give a 9 p.m. address on the debt negotiations, more than twice as many people tuned into cable news channels as normally do, with Fox News again leading the pack with 3.5 million total viewers.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last week found strong engagement on the issue, with 55 percent of respondent saying that failing to raise the debt ceiling would be a serious problem, and only a quarter saying they still didn’t know enough about the issue to make a decision.