Barack Obama’s convention speech, delivered on Thursday night at the Field in Denver, between 10 and 11 p.m. managed to draw the attention of 38.4 million people. This estimate given by the Nielson Media Research makes it the most-watched convention speech till date.
The Cable News Network (CNN) was the choice of many people to watch the speech as the channel marked an average of more than 8 million viewers for Obama’s one-hour speech. ABC News, followed this viewership record with 6.6 million viewers, NBC News with 6.1 million viewers. The CBS news managed to draw a number of 4.6 million, which is more as compared to the 4.2 million of Fox News Channel and 4.1 million of MSNBC.
As a matter of comparison, Obama’s speech generated about 60 percent more viewers than the Dem Acceptance speech of John Kerry, delivered four years back. Moreover, as per the records of the Nielsen Media, Al Gore’s acceptance speech was able to draw 22 million viewers in 2000, which is similar with the speech of George W Bush at the Republican convention. In contrast Bill Clinton’s speech attracted around 27 million people in 1992.
A Nielson reporter said, “Unfortunately, we’re never going to know [the audience size] for just the speech. As such we cannot assume these previous conventions to be very clean. For instance, the broadcast networks provided over one hour of conventions every night in 1992, but Nielson did not mentioned the hour in which the acceptance speech was given.
