Karen Watson,  Managing Director, Government & Public Sector Sales, The Nielsen Company
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.
“As audiences …

The Internet played an important role in the 2008 election campaign, so it’s no surprise that on Election Day, people used multiple news sources to follow results.  By combining television and Internet samples through a process known as fusion, Nielsen provides new data showing how the two media worked together to meet the demand for election news updates.
A total of 163.6 million adults sought election coverage from either television or the Internet — or both. This shows the unduplicated or cumulative audience that used one or the other medium for at …

Sen. Barack Obama will reportedly run a half-hour paid political simulcast on CBS and NBC, just days before the U.S. presidential election.
Obama’s simulcast would be the first to be aired by a presidential candidate since Ross Perot ran a series of 15 political telecasts during the 1992 presidential election.
Perot’s 1992 telecasts drew an average audience of 11.6 million viewers — 4.6% of all viewers nationwide.  His one simulcast, carried on ABC and CBS on November 2, 1992 between 8pm and 8:30pm, attracted 26 million viewers.

The Barack Obama Campaign generated significant buzz this weekend by announcing Senator Obama’s Vice Presidential selection via SMS text-message. Nielsen estimates that 2.9 million U.S. mobile subscribers received a text message from the Obama campaign over the weekend.
The Vice Presidential message (sent in the late hours of Friday night) is, by many accounts, the single largest mobile marketing event ever in the U.S.
“From a mobile perspective, it makes sense that the campaign chose to use text-messages,” Nic Covey, Director of Insights, Nielsen Mobile, noted. “Today, 116 million U.S. mobile subscribers (52 …

In a year of historic political firsts, cable news networks have devoted a larger-than-normal portion of news airtime to the 2008 presidential campaign, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. 
That strategy seems to be paying off, the L.A. Times noted.  According to Nielsen, Fox News has averaged 1.66 million weekday primetime viewers this year — up 14% from 2007.  Meanwhile CNN’s audience has grown by 40% to 1.06 million in 2008, and MSNBC’s viewership has increased 41% to 713,000.
The current cable news ratings increases extend a trend that began in 2004, …

Barack Obama’s Olympics ads strike a positive note, while John McCain’s ads take a more negative approach, The New York Times “TV Decorder” blog reported Monday.
The story noted that one McCain ad attacking Obama aired last Friday during the Olympics opening ceremony’s “parade of nations” — a procession of smiling athletes. 
According to Nielsen, that ad accounted for 30 seconds of the total 35 minutes of commercials that aired on NBC’s U.S. broadcast of the opening ceremony.
View Nielsen’s advertising data round-up for the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.