Thompson, Lieberman Draw Fewer Viewers Than Dems’ Day 2
More than 21.5 million people watched the second night of the 2008 Republican National Convention — a 17% decrease from the 26 million viewers who tuned in last week for day two of the Democratic National Convention.
Tuesday night’s speeches by Former Senator Fred Thompson and Senator Joe Lieberman drew many more women (11.2 million) than men (9.5 million), as was also the case on day two of the Democratic convention, when Hillary Clinton delivered her endorsement of Barack Obama.
So far, coverage of the GOP convention has not drawn the large numbers of African American viewers that the Democrats’ convention attracted last week. On Tuesday night, 2.1 million African American viewers (5.8% of all African Americans) tuned in for coverage of the RNC. In comparison, more than double that number — 4.6 million African Americans (12.7% of all African Americans) — tuned in to day two of the DNC.
| Rating | Number | |
|---|---|---|
| All Households | 14.2 | 16,235,000 |
| Persons 2+ | 7.3 | 21,528,000 |
| Women 18+ | 9.7 | 11,200,000 |
| Men 18+ | 8.8 | 9,519,000 |
| Persons 12-17 | 1.4 | 220,000 |
| Persons 18-34 | 3.7 | 2,508,000 |
| Persons 18-49 | 5.4 | 7,226,000 |
| Persons 55+ | 16.1 | 11,427,000 |
| African American Persons 2+ * | 5.8 | 2,133,000 |
| Hispanic Persons 2+ * | 1.8 | 847,000 |
| White Persons 2+ * | 8.5 | 18,045,000 |
| Source: The Nielsen Company (September 2, 2008) | ||
| Figures are the sum of the networks during the common hour of coverage. Included networks are ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. | ||
| *Ratings for African American, Hispanic, and White viewers show the percent of African American, Hispanic, and White persons age two and older in TV homes watching the convention coverage. | ||
Compared to day two of the 2004 GOP convention, which drew more than 22 million viewers, the audience for day two of the 2008 convention was slightly lower, with approximately 600,000 fewer viewers.
On Tuesday, September 2, 2008, convention coverage varied by network, with ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX News Channel, and MSNBC airing live coverage from approximately 10pm to 11pm EST.
On Monday, September 1, the first night of the GOP convention, TV coverage of Hurricane Gustav replaced planned coverage of the convention on most broadcast and cable networks. As a result, Nielsen did not be provide audience estimates for Monday night’s convention.
View the full media alert.
Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Ad Age, TV Week, and Variety.
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:12 pm
[...] by admin as Political Nielsen released television ratings for the second day of the Republican National Convention. Some of the [...]
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:19 pm
[...] Lose TV Viewers Nielsen released television ratings for the second day of the Republican National Convention. Some of the [...]
September 4th, 2008 at 12:54 am
I will tell you one reason why fewer people viewed the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night. It was because of the so-called “coverage” by CBS. Let me explain.
Last week, my wife and I watched the Democratic National Convention on CBS. They aired it properly.
Now, of course, it is no big secret that CBS News people are blatantly pro-Obama, but I didn’t expect them to treat the RNCC so shabbily last night (Tuesday night). Earlier in the day, CBS said that they would cover the RNCC at 10pm. Both my wife and I expected that they would air the convention like they did with the DNCC. So, we waited to watch it. But we couldn’t watch it because CBS didn’t air the convention.
When 10 pm came around, the “coverage” of the convention consisted in large measure to Couric talking with people off to the side of the convention floor or to a another talking head or two. They did not air the convention speakers like they did when the DNCC was aired.
My wife, who has no political ax to grind, was disappointed and angry with CBS. So, I quickly went to the internet and we watched the RNCC via the Fox News internet site (live feed). So we didn’t miss too much. But we kept the television on CBS (no audio…we listened to the audio from the Fox News) just to see what CBS was doing. Essentially, if you tuned into CBS to watch the convention, you would be sorely disappointed to see talking heads and people off to the side rather than the convention speakers or the convention itself. Now who wants to watch that? Not me. Not my wife.
This morning my wife made the comment to me that the people at CBS News should be fired for what they did. I told her that the only way to “fire” them is to simply turn the channel and get your news from another source. So, tonight we went to Fox News. I did flip on the television and did note that, unlike last night, CBS actually aired the convention speakers at 10pm tonight. But I will not depend on CBS for any “news” because they filter it. They only present the “news” that they want you to see.
So, if you folks at Nielson wonder why fewer people watched the television last night to catch Republican speakers like Fred Thompson, one reason may be that, like my wife and me, (we were counting on CBS to air it) was that CBS didn’t really “air” it…at least, not the way they had done last week with the DNCC. You know, if broadcast television “news” continues to filter the news, I believe that you are going to see fewer and fewer viewers of television news and more and more people getting their news from the internet. The days when the major networks could get away with withholding the news or could filter the news are over. We viewers have too many other ways to get the real news instead of what CBS passes off as “news”.
R. P. Reitz
September 4th, 2008 at 9:27 am
[...] Nielson ratings are coming in for GOP Convention. This seems to jibe with the enthusiasm gap we’ve been seeing, Gustav probably had an impact as well. Numbers should be up for last night’s wingnut lovefest. We’ll see… [...]
September 4th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
I’ve been trying to find stats to back this up, but haven’t come up with anything so far. Maybe you can help:
It seems like the Republican convention would have a built-in ratings advantage by taking place the week after Labor Day. In theory, there should be a larger universe of Households Using Television this week, with schools back in session and family vacations over with.
Is there any Neilsen historical data that would back this up, showing that there are simply more people watching television in the first week of September vs. the last week of August? After all, isn’t that why broadcast networks used to wait until September to unveil their new lineups?
Thanks for any light you may be able to shed on this…
Bruce Bailey
Collegeville, PA