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.

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.