via nielsenwire
An estimated 30.3 million people watched the fourth and final night of the 2012 Republican National Convention on Thursday, August 30. [...]
In 2008, more than 38.9 million people watched the comparable closing night of the RNC when John McCain accepted the Republican presidential nomination— about 8.6 million more people than last night’s viewership. [...]
While coverage varied by network, all eleven aired live coverage from approximately 10:00PM to 11:15PM. The chart below highlights the sum of the average audience for these networks during common coverage.
| Sum of Networks Live + Same Day | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1- 8/27/2012 | Day 2- 8/28/2012 | Day 3- 8/29/2012 | Day 4- 8/30/2012 | |||||
| rating | Number of Viewers |
Rating | Number of Viewers |
Rating | Number of Viewers |
Rating | Number of Viewers |
|
| All Households |
No common coverage due to Hurricane Isaac |
14.7 | 16,920,000 | 14.7 | 16,697,000 | 19.3 | 22,095,000 | |
| Persons 2+ | 7.7 | 22,301,000 | 7.7 | 21,942,000 | 10.5 | 30,251,000 | ||
| Persons 18-34 | 2.2 | 1,483,000 | 3.2 | 2,129,000 | 4.7 | 3,214,000 | ||
| Persons 35-54 | 6.7 | 5,414,000 | 6.7 | 5,482,000 | 10.3 | 8,329,000 | ||
| Persons 55+ | 18.8 | 14,661,000 | 17.6 | 13,670,000 | 22.5 | 17,539,000 | ||
Networks Included:
Day 2 – ABC, CBS, CNBC, CNN, FOXNC, CRNT, MSNBC, NBC and PBS
Day 3 – ABC, CBS, CNBC, CNN, FOXNC, CRNT, MSNBC, NBC and PBS
Day 4 – ABC, CBS, CNBC, CNN, FOXNC, CRNT, MSNBC, MUN2, NBC, PBS and UNI
| Sum of Networks Live + Same Day | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1- 9/1/2008 | Day 2- 9/2/2008 | Day 3- 9/3/2008 | Day 4- 9/4/2008 | |||||||
| Rating | Number of Viewers | Rating | Number of Viewers | Rating | Number of Viewers | Rating | Number of Viewers | |||
| Persons 2+ |
No common coverage due to Hurricane Gustav |
7.3 | 21,528,000 | 12.9 | 37,244,000 | 13.4 | 38,933,000 | |||
2008 Networks Included
Day 2 – ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC
Day 3 – ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC
Day 4 – ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, Univision, Telemundo
I watched PBS since I don’t have cable – they aired all 4 hours of the convention – I bet those viewers wern’t counted either
How many watched on C-Span? I watched C-Span because the talking heads talked too much or the stations did not show the speakers I wanted to hear.
It will be interesting to see if slick willy can pull one out for the team when goes up against NFL (pardon the pun) might watch if Biden goes postal at the DNC convention. The debt clock will reach 16 trillion on Tuesday, and the economic numbers will come out on Thursday. Ouch double whammy.
Maybe this just means that Nielsen boxes go to more Dems.
It’s down because no one really cares about Romney, not even his own base…
Why isn’t CSPAN shown???
How is the DNC convention going to look?
According to Pew Research, interest in the DNC convention this year is not as high as in 2008, with 57% of those interviewed not being interested at all in following what happens at the convention – 34% of democrats and 64% of independents are not interested at all.
Bill Gorman
Posted August 31, 2012 at 8:10 PM
“Wow that has to be embarrassing for the GOP.”
Nonsense.
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That’s fine to argue the ‘embarrassing’ comment, but to write that off as nonsense isn’t fair. That’s a very valid POV. Considering the “momentum” created in 2008 in Presidential politics in general, plus the huge Republican boom in 2010, for numbers to fall back into normalcy is not a sign that there is any sort of excitement in the Republican party, and considering that the Repubs are facing an incumbant President, and need something to push them over the top to win the election, and Paul Ryan was hardly a safe, boring pick, the GOP would have every reason to be “embarrassed” by the average response.
DryedMangoez
Posted August 31, 2012 at 5:13 PM
Hmm, now that you mention NFL Opening Day as a lead-in to McCain in 2008, it’s interesting to see this year’s NFL Kickoff moved to Wednesday at a regular 8:30 ET kickoff instead of NBC again using the game, this time giving Obama a big boost in eyes for his speech.
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while you are certainly entitled to your political opinions, I think the NFL’s planning had more to do with the fact that the last Obama DNC speech drew close to 40 million viewers and with all the growing records set by the NFL in ratings the past few years, why jeopardize that by putting their season opener up against a proven ratings draw.
As a staunch liberal who considers himself to the left of the late Senator Kennedy on most issues I feel certain that this year was an outlier (or outLIAR) for many of the reasons outlined. The Republican convention did just fine and I l expect a similar decline in DNC viewership this year as well.
Why is C-span not included in the numbers? I am willing to bet that more viewers tuned in to their coverage so they didn’t have to be subjected to media bias.
@Justin – the Olympics!