40.6 million people watched the speech on broadcast networks, while 17.3 million tuned in on cable networks
Big Broadcast Numbers For Obama Speech
More than 70% of the 57.9 million people who watched President Obama’s Sunday night speech were watching broadcast networks, according to TVB’s analysis of Nielsen data. Less than 30%, or 17.3 million, watched the coverage on cable news networks.
The highest numbers of viewers on the broadcast networks were NBC (12.8 million), ABC (9. 5 million), CBS (8.2 million), Fox (3.2 million) and Univision (2.8 million).
On the cable news networks, the highest numbers were garnered by CNN (9.5 million), Fox News (5.1 million), and MSNBC (2.7 million).
TVB’s analysis was of viewers aged 2+ in the 11:30-11:45 p.m. ET time period, according to Nielsen’s Galaxy Explorer data.
Comments (1)
Kathryn Miller says:
May 6, 2011 at 4:10 pm
The CBS number, no doubt, is lower than the other three by such a significant gap (the coverage pre-empted the last 15 minutes of “60 minutes”) because it was transmitted in SDTV, but the shots seem to have been framed as 16:9. The long lead-in meant that people with modern televison sets sought “coverage as wide as their television set.”