Nielsen Wire » Bill Clinton

49.5 Million People Watch Obama Press Conference

Nielsen Wire — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:17:28 +0000

On Monday February 9, 2009 President Barack Obama held his first prime time news conference. The conference was telecast live from 8 to 9PM on 8 networks achieving a combined 30.8 household rating with 49,455,133 viewers. The networks were ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, Univision, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC.

Just weeks after his inauguration in 1993 President Bill Clinton also held a prime time news conference. That event focused on the economy and was carried by 4 networks on February 15, 1993. The sum of the audience of those networks was a 42.1 household rating with 64,300,000 viewers on average.

On October 11, 2001, exactly a month after the attacks of September 11, President Bush held a prime time news conference that was carried by 7 networks. The sum of those networks’ audience from approximately 8-8:45PM was a 42.0 household rating with 64,813,000 viewers.

In 1993 the average U.S. TV home had approximately 40 channels available. By 2000 the average home had 61 channels and now that figure has increased to more than 118 channels available.

Gustav, Biden, Left Behind In Wake Of Palin Buzz

Nielsen Wire — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:37:18 +0000

Since John McCain’s announcement that his running mate would be Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, blogs have been buzzing about this little-known leader of the 49th state. According to Nielsen Online’s BuzzMetrics service, the Aug 29th event sent chatter about Palin well beyond that for her Democratic rival Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, whose announcement on August 22, impacted slightly more than 1.75% of all blog posts, compared with Palin’s peak above 2.25%. Even the impending Gulf Coast landfall of Hurricane Gustav on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina was overshadowed on the blogs by the surprise VP pick of Palin.

On September 3, Palin will speak before the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. While her blog buzz continues to dominate Biden’s, TV ratings for her speech will be analyzed tomorrow against night three viewership of the Democratic National Convention when both Senator Biden and former President Clinton spoke.

Day 3 DNC Ratings For Clinton, Biden Dip Slightly

admin — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:25:02 +0000

More than 24 million people watched the third night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention — a 7.5% decrease from 26 million viewers on day two of the convention.

Wednesday night’s speeches, which featured Former President Bill Clinton’s endorsement of Senator Obama and Senator Joseph Biden’s acceptance of his party’s nomination for vice president, drew 12.2% of all African American viewers — down slightly from the prevous night when Hillary Clinton addressed the convention (12.7%), but up from day one (12%), when Michelle Obama spoke.

Viewers age 55 and older continue to dominate the DNC’s TV audience, with 18.1% of all Americans in that age group — 12.5 million people — tuning in to Wednesday night’s convention coverage on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX News Channel, MSNBC, BET, and TV One.

	RATING	NUMBER
All Households	16.4	18,481,000
Persons 2+	8.4	24,029,000
Persons 12-17	1.9	440,000
Persons 18-34	4.7	3,131,000
Persons 18-49	6.2	8,153,000
Persons 55+	18.1	12,509,000
African American Persons 2+ *	12.2	4,413,000
Hispanic Persons 2+ *	2.7	1,159,000
White Persons 2+ *	8.4	18,125,000
Source: The Nielsen Company (August 27, 2008)
Figures are the sum of the networks during the common hour of coverage. Included networks are ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, BET, and TV One.
*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.

In comparison to day three of the 2004 convention, which drew almost 18 million viewers, the audience for day three of the 2008 convention was still significantly larger (up by a third to 24 million viewers).

On Wednesday, August 27, 2008, convention coverage varied by network, with all eight networks noted above airing live coverage from approximately 10pm to 11pm EST.

View the full media alert.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in MarketWatch, The New York Times’ “TV Decoder” blog, and Variety.