Sarah Palin’s RNC Speech Drew 37.2 Million Viewers to Joe Biden’s 24 million and Paul Ryan’s 21.9 million

David Bauder at the Huffington Post wrote this on September 4, 2008:

Barack Obama apparently isn’t the only “rock star” in presidential politics this year.

After days of intense media coverage about Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s qualifications, more than 40 million Americans tuned in Wednesday to see for themselves what they thought of her.

The huge audience for Palin’s acceptance speech rivaled that for Obama’s address at the Democratic National Convention six days earlier, and set a tough standard for the top of her own ticket. John McCain was to accept the GOP presidential nomination on Thursday.

The first two days of the GOP convention essentially served as a build-up for Palin. The Alaska governor hadn’t spoken publicly since McCain selected her for the ticket last Friday, as a series of stories circulated questioning whether McCain had properly vetted her.

Her poised speech, primarily going after Obama and touting McCain’s case for the presidency, was gushed over by many analysts.

An audience of 37.2 million people watched Palin on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, Nielsen Media Research said Thursday. PBS estimated its audience at 3.9 million, based on a less reliable sample of several big cities. Nielsen does not count the audience for C-SPAN, which also showed the speech.

Last week, Nielsen said 38.4 million people watched Obama speak at a Denver stadium on the six commercial networks, along with BET, TV One, Univision and Telemundo _ four networks that didn’t cover Palin’s speech. PBS added an estimated 4 million to that total.

Nearly 2 million more women were watching Palin than men, Nielsen said.

Viewers were far more interested in Palin than Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden. Biden’s speech to Democrats last week was seen by an estimated 24 million people.

The audiences for the Obama and Palin speeches were bigger than the ones this year for the Academy Awards, the finale of “American Idol” or the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing.

[…]

Fox News Channel led the way Wednesday, with 9.2 million people watching Palin’s speech on the cable channel. It was the third-largest audience in its history, behind only President Bush’s speech on Iraq in March 2003 and a Bush-Kerry presidential debate in 2004.

[…]

NBC had 7.7 million viewers for Palin’s speech, followed in order by CNN, ABC, CBS and MSNBC, Nielsen said.

Note that the 38.4 million figure for Obama included 4 networks on which Palin’s speech was not shown.  In addition, the 37.2 million figure for Palin did not include her viewers on C-SPAN.   If just the audiences on the 6 stations on which both speeches were shown were compared, most likely Palin’s audience would be the larger of the two.  Also, if you consider that there was an  audience of about 4 million each for Palin and Obama on PBS alone, adding her  C-SPAN audience to Palin’s 37.2 million would likely bring her total audience to over 38.4 million.  So Bauder’s statement that the audience for Palin’s RNC speech “rivaled” that for Obama’s DNC speech is very true..

Also see:

Minus Palin, Convention’s TV Ratings Plunge

Paul Ryan not nearly the TV draw Sarah Palin was

Ryan’s Convention Speech Draws Fewer Viewers Than Palin

Paul Ryan’s RNC speech draws 17 million fewer viewers than previous GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin in 2008  

Ryan’s no Palin in the ratings

RNC Ratings Night Two: Networks Lose 17 Million Viewers Compared To Night Two Of 2008 RNC  

Flashback:  FNC Wins With Top Rated Convention Broadcast in Cable History

Viewership down from 2008 Republican convention

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