Senator Barack Obama’s infomercial drew 33.5 million U.S. viewers Wednesday night, according to Nielsen.
The simulcast — the first of its kind since Ross Perot ran a political telecast on the eve of Election Day in 1996 — aired on CBS, FOX, NBC, Univision, BET, MSNBC, and TV One between 8pm and 8:30pm EDT.
Perot’s 1996 telecast drew almost 22.7 million viewers.
On an average Wednesday night, the networks that aired Obama’s telecast draw a combined average of 30.3 million average viewers during that half-hour daypart.
In comparison, the final debate between the two presidential candidates drew 56.5 million U.S. viewers on October 15. The candidates’ first debate on September 26 drew 52.4 million viewers; their second debate, on October 7, drew 63.2 million viewers.
View the full media alert.
Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings by Reuters and the Associated Press, as well as in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, the Baltimore Sun, The Hollywood Reporter, Adweek, Ad Age, Multichannel News, Broadcasting & Cable, Media Life, and Media Post.
[...] Nielsen reports that 33.5 million people watched Obama’s ad across seven stations between 8 and 8:30 ET last night. [...]
[...] Sounds like it’s 33.5 million, according to Nielsen. [...]
I made a point of not watching the infomercial. But I had already voted for Obama anyway.
When do we get to find out how Pushing Daisies did?
[...] ad viewed by more than 20% of the country is not too shabby. That’s around 33.5 million viewers spread across CBS, Fox, NBC, MSNBC, BET, TVOne, and Univision. The real loser last night was ABC, [...]
I’m doing a paper on Barack Obama and John mccain at school and this helped.
O.K. Lets see. He was on ALL the major net works and on selected stations. IE: Hispanic speaking stations. Now, most of these stations had programing people were waiting for, and programs people had TiVo’ed. It was also World Series night… So, of course he had over 33 million viewers. I was on another channel, and watching a recorded program. I caught it the next day.
I would have to say the Nealson ratings are not accurate for those waiting to see only him. Nice try.
Greg-
Right, ABC did not run Sen. Obama’s infomercial Wednesday night — instead “Pushing Daisies” aired from 8pm to 9pm.
That show just missed making our ranking of the top 10 shows for Wednesday night (it placed 12th out of 34 telecasts) — so you won’t find it on the our daily overnight ratings post: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/primetime-broadcast-ratings-october-29-2008/.
However, we can confirm that “Pushing Daisies” drew almost 6.7 million viewers Wednesday night.
-Nielsen Wire
[...] 30, 2008 by Ben Another of Nielsen’s Blogs, Nielsen Wire, shows that Obama’s “infomercial” had a huge impact on the Primetime TV crowd [...]
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