Conversations about Memorial Day ranged from the hottest retail sales during the holiday to plans for the weekend. So what were bloggers doing? Maybe they were at the movies. Two of the top 10 topics in May were the new movie releases, Star Trek and Terminator Salvation.

Political figures were also widely discussed in May, with Barack Obama being the No. 3 most talked about topic for the month. Bloggers buzzed about the president’s desire to pass a new credit card reform law, his planned trip to the Middle East, and his visit to the University of Notre Dame. In fact, his visit to Notre Dame was so widely discussed that the phrase, Notre Dame, became the 5th most talked about subject in May. President Obama’s May 26th nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court was also widely discussed among bloggers. Former Vice President Dick Cheney also emerged as the fourth most blogged-about topic.

Bloggers Still Buzzing about the Flu

While Swine Flu was top of mind for many bloggers in April, it fell to No. 8 in May. Bloggers continued to discuss the latest cases and growing number of infected; however, there were also many conversations that discussed how the initial panic surrounding the epidemic was over-inflated and unnecessary.

Viewership for the presser was 29% less than the President’s last press conference on March 24, which was seen on 11 networks. President Obama’s first primetime press conference was watched by 49.5 million U.S. viewers on eight networks.

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S PRIMETIME PRESS CONFERENCE RATINGS

Networks airing last night’s press conference from 8pm to 9pm ET included ABC, CBS, NBC, Univision, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, CNBC, and MUN2. Telemundo aired the press conference on a tape delay at 11:35pm ET.

Download the media advisory.

One hundred days is scarcely enough time to draw any firm conclusions about a new president’s capabilities. Even so, Barack Obama has garnered considerable respect for his media skills. Pundits have dubbed him the “new media president;” while some of the most cynical among them believe his underlying strategy is to end run traditional Washington gatekeepers by communicating more directly with constituents sympathetic to his agenda. But his fans and critics alike may be missing the bigger picture.

It’s true Mr. Obama has readily embraced most things digital. Throughout much of his campaign, his unique online audience bested those of his opponents – Hillary Clinton during the primaries, and John McCain in the general election – sometimes two-to-one. His historic 26-word text message announcing Joe Biden as his running mate reached nearly three million U.S. mobile subscribers, and is considered the nation’s single largest mobile marketing event ever. And since taking the oath of office, he has continued to use the web to blog on vital issues and field questions from the public. 

It should come as no surprise, however, that the president is taking full advantage of new technologies. Given the current state of the media, it would be more astonishing if he didn’t.

American consumers, like their counterparts around the world, have a seemingly insatiable appetite for information, from just about everywhere. Time spent with blogs and social networks, for example, is increasing globally at more than three times the rate of overall Internet growth, particularly among audiences 50 and older. Little wonder then that Mr. Obama is active on Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and Twitter.

Much has also been made about the president’s penchant for his Blackberry. Yet with the typical U.S. mobile subscriber now sending and receiving more text-based data than voice calls, the ability to “thumb” a message is critical to reaching certain sectors of the population.

Still, it is with video, the emerging lingua franca of the 21st century, that Mr. Obama has probably been most prolific. Americans today watch more video than ever before, primarily on three screens – television, the Internet and cell phones. But despite the growth of online and mobile media, more than 99 percent of screen time is still in front of the TV set in the home. Acknowledging this fact, the president has made ample use of the medium. [see: Video Viewing Up At WhiteHouse.gov]

Tonight, he will hold his third televised press conference, raising his monthly average above any other president since John F. Kennedy. Last month he appeared on both The Tonight Show and 60 Minutes, helping to drive up their ratings to the highest levels in four and 10 years respectively.

Consequently, President Obama has underscored two important facets of an ever-changing media landscape. First, as audiences continually fragment into smaller, self-defined groups, communicating with them will mean working across multiple platforms.  Second, the process is not a zero sum game. At any given time, consumers tend to favor the best available screen, basing their decisions on factors such as convenience, availability of content and the quality of the viewing experience. Thus, new media alone will not be enough to successfully reach all constituencies.

Regardless, Barack Obama will increasingly turn to new and emerging media technologies, as will the rest of the nation. Yet he is hardly the only president to do so. Some 67 years ago, Franklin Roosevelt became the “radio president,” as people began listening to radio to help carry them through the Great Depression. For his part, JFK initiated live, televised news conferences.

Back then as now, neither was the first to use their respective medium, though each was the first to truly master it. Like President Obama today, each was also able, to some degree, to bypass mainstream filters and talk more directly to the public. Since the invention of movable type, that has historically been one of the key advantages of any new medium. What is more, it is not likely to change.

It’s no secret that the 8pm hour generates much-needed ad dollars for broadcast TV networks. In February, ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC combined to average $21.5 million in revenue on Wednesdays from 8pm to 9pm ET. With that kind of money in play, networks are forced to balance their public service duties with financial obligations.

So what happens to advertisers who pay good money to place ads on pre-empted primetime broadcasting?

“In a situation like that, networks will find other ways to make good on their deals with advertisers,” says Annie Touliatos, VP for Sales Development at Monitor-Plus, Nielsen’s advertising intelligence service. “They can shift programming or offer to run the ad another week. They can also spread the ad buy over several spots that offer the advertiser the same level of viewer impressions. The key is for advertisers to ensure they will reach their target audiences effectively.”

President Barack Obama has reached his 100th day in office amid generally positive sentiment according to a Nielsen Online analysis of online “buzz” surrounding the 44th President. Using our Brand Association Map to plot keywords and phrases, we demonstrate visually how the conversations have shifted between his first 100 days in office, compared to the 100 days before his swearing in.

The economy and the economic stimulus package are the isues most closely associated with President Obama’s tenure, as words like “crisis,” “trillion,” “banks,” and “tax” are nested more closely to “economy” and the President. Aside from new terms like “socialist” and “blame” found in the Map for the last 100 days, there is a surprising lack of emotionally charged or negative content about the President found in this dataset culled from millions of online messages and posts that mention Obama.

What A Difference 100 Days Makes – Other Findings

• Post inauguration, radio personality Rush Limbaugh and former President George W. Bush are now the most closely associated to Obama in online conversations. Previously, Arizona Sen. John McCain correlated most closely to Obama.
• Discussion about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – two topics that produced high-volume, emotionally strong online buzz — are featured more prominently, and closer together, in the most recent sample surrounded by words like “terrorists” and “troops.”.
• Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is the only foreign leader whose name emerges in correlation with Obama discussion.
• CNN is the only media outlet that appears on the map
• Obama carries little pre-election “baggage” with him into the White House. Questions about his citizenship and Kenyan roots, for example, all but disappear from the mapped discussion once he takes office.
• Change, the mantra of his campaign, has moved further out on the map.

Click images to enlarge

*About the Brand Association Map

Similar to a bulls-eye, the BAM determines phrase correlations within a data set of consumer-generated media. A leading concept (brand, issue, personality, etc) is placed in the center of the bulls-eye, and phrases that have a relationship to the leading concept appear within one of the three rings. All words/phrases on the map are significantly correlated to the center term. For ease of viewing, the words are separated on the association map into different categories, as seen in the legend. The closer a word appears to the leading concept in the center of the bulls-eye, the stronger the correlation. Also, groups of phrases that reside together on the map are placed together for relationship purposes.

Video: Obama And CNN’s Ed Henry

Other Findings

• Based on questions posed before and after the press conference regarding confidence in the President’s plan, Republicans and Democrats remained generally unmoved, but Independents were swayed in a more positive direction.
• Inheriting deficit is a sore spot with Republicans
• Both parties agreed criticism of President Obama was not about race

View Tracking By Time And Topic Click To Enlarge

Nearly 37.8 million Americans watching at home viewed President Barack Obama’s oath of office and inaugural speech between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. ET on January 20, 2009.  This is the most viewed inauguration since the record of 41.8 million viewers who watched Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration.

This is the first inaugural since Nielsen began tracking time-shifted viewing, and this year’s data is based on Live + Same Day, meaning incremental viewing during the same broadcast day is included.

Download the complete report.

RELATED: Nielsen Online traffic data for News, Current Event, and Video Streaming on Inauguration Day.

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The combined overall household rating for the inauguration of President Barack Obama in the top 56 local television markets where Nielsen maintains TV meters was 30.1%.

The Raleigh-Durham market had the largest TV audience with more than 51% of households tuned in to the day’s events.

See previous ratings for presidential elections here.

Key findings are:

• Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration drew the most viewers – almost 42 million.

• First time inaugurations of two-term presidents drew higher ratings than their second (exception: Nixon in 1973).

• The least watched inauguration since 1969: George W. Bush in 2005, with 15.5 million.

Click this link for complete inauguration ratings 1969-2005

Top 10 blogs discussing DTV-related topics between October 1, 2008 and January 11, 2009

What we talk about when we talk about DTV

As bloggers and consumers dive into DTV, certain keywords emerge surrounding their discussions. This cloud shows (by size) the words most closely associated or frequently mentioned with the topic.