Last night's address to a joint session of Congress was seen by 32.1 million (this updates the previous report from Nielsen of 31.8 million) viewers across 10 television networks.
I've seen a lot of comments about how Obama's TV popularity is waning with all his time on the airwaves, and while 31.8 million is down from the big numbers of February, it's up versus July (24.7 million) and April (28.8 million) press conferences. See for yourself.
The night's cable news network ratings are here, and here is the info from Nielsen Wire with a comparison to February's address:
| President Obama Addressing Joint Session of Congress | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Networks | Households | Viewers (P2+) |
| September 9, 2009 | ABC, CBS, NBC, Univision*, Telemundo*, BET*, CNBC, CNN, FOX News Channel, and MSNBC |
23,607,629 | 32,111,596 |
| February 24, 2009 | ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, Telemundo, Univision, CNBC, CNN, FOX News Channel and MSNBC |
37,185,000 | 52,373,000 |
| Source: The Nielsen Company *Aired address on Tape Delay. All data are based on LiveSD stream. |
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Feb 24th was the State of the Union thing?
yes, 2/24 was the State of the Union address. The post Bill did yesterday only listed press conferences, but not the State of the Union address. Since only last night and the State of the Union addresses were to a joint session of congress, Nielsen compared the two…
Yes, February 24th was the State of the Union address. It is a reasonable comparison in so far as the setting. It was the last time the President addressed a joint session of Congress.
At some point, Obama is going to realize that this monthly (or more) national address is basically killing him with the public.
He still isn’t touching Sarah Palins numbers and he hasn’t for more than a year now.
He really needs to go into hiding and let his numbers recover. This is heading into Regis and the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire range….
This guy desperately needs a media advisor. Or maybe just one who isn’t a megalomaniac. His ratings and his polls are basically running in tandem. By the end of the year, he’ll be making Bush look popular.
How did CBS particularly do with the speech. I am a conservative (as many of you in the new ratings post know sorry) and i was impressed with the fairness of the coverage.
I really wish he would have started the speech with “Specific details have yet to be ironed out,” but he waited towards the middle to say that. Maybe he would have saved everyone the time they spent watching him.
Cody, I never saw final numbers for the broadcast networks. but in the preliminary numbers, CBS was last of the big three:
From 8pm-9pm the president averaged 21.2 million just on ABC (adults 18-49 rating/share =1.8/5, 7.4 million total viewers), CBS (1.2/4, 5.63 million) and NBC (1.9/6 8.16 million).
Cody, our overnight post has the fast affiliate breakdown for the broadcast networks.
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/09/10/tv-ratings-sytycd-vs-potus-and-glee-premieres-nicely/26693
If this was as show these would be good over all numbers since it’s trending back up. The demo numbers don’t look that good though.
Exactly, y’all need to calculate a renewal/cancel index for the President after each speech. Then folks can discuss whether the network in question was right to run/not run the speech, should DVR numbers really matter for press conferences…etc.
YOU LIE
All I know is the younger generation is supposed to addore Obama. The numbers should reflect that.
The real question is that if it took a special joint session of Congress in order to get an extra 5M viewers then what will Obama have to pull out in October. He has made a national address virtually every month thus far. And the over/under for each network is getting easier and easier to determine.
Maybe he can bring in Oprah or Michael Jordan. But he’ll have to do something or Fox won’t be the only network turning down another free political commercial spot during primetime. If history is any guide, the Obama campaign will be trying to top themselves somehow so it ought to be interesting and beyond whatever prior politicians ever tried to pull off.