Record number of viewers watched McCain's acceptance speech

Friday, September 5, 2008

According to numbers released Friday by the Nielsen Media Research company, a record 38.9 million Americans watched John McCain accept the nomination for President of the United States from the Republican Party on Thursday at the 2008 Republican National Convention.

The previous record for American viewership during a political convention was set last month when Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party nomination. About 38.4 million people watched Obama. On Wednesday, 37 million people tuned in to see vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin speak.

Thursday's audience was 41 percent larger than the fourth day of the 2004 Republican National Convention, when 27.5 million people watched George W. Bush accept the nomination of his party for a second time.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the demographics of the viewers differed from Obama on Friday to McCain on Thursday. McCain's speech drew 19.2 million men, while Obama drew 17.9 million. Obama's speech drew 19.9 million women, while McCain drew 19.2. Among white viewers, 32.2 million watched McCain, while 27 million watched Obama. Among African American viewers, 7.5 million watched Obama, while 3.1 million watched McCain.

According to Reuters, the format by which Nielsen conducts its research — known as the Nielsen Ratings — has changed since 2004, adding two networks and factoring in people who watched the speech via a digital video recorder. According to the Los Angeles Times, people who watched coverage of the conventions on PBS were not counted. PBS estimates about 4 million people watch their coverage nightly during the convention.

ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, Univision, Telemundo broadcast on day four of the GOP convention. Univision and Telemundo, which broadcast in Spanish, were not included in 2004. In addition, BET and TV One, which covered day four of the Democratic convention did not cover the Republican convention.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Related news

"Barack Obama accepts US presidential nomination from the Democratic Party" — Wikinews, August 30, 2008

Sources

Wikinews

This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.

Wikinews

This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.

Alana Johnson and Anne Elliot. "Audience Estimates for the 2008 Republican National Convention" — Nielsen Media Research, September 5, 2008
Kate Linthicum. "Record numbers of viewers tune in to the GOP convention" — Los Angeles Times, September 5, 2008
Kate Linthicum. "Sarah Palin's speech draws an audience of more than 37 million" — Los Angeles Times, September 5, 2008
Jill Serjeant. "John McCain speech draws record TV ratings" — Reuters, September 5, 2008
Steve Gorman. "UPDATE 1-Obama acceptance speech believed to set TV record" — Reuters, August 29, 2008

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License