The virtual Democratic National Convention struggled with ratings throughout the week. Joe Biden’s nomination acceptance speech on Thursday night was the biggest ratings draw, but even that came up short compared to four years ago.
Media reporter Joe Concha writes at The Hill:
Biden draws highest TV ratings of Democratic convention, but down from 2016Joe Biden’s speech Thursday night accepting the Democratic presidential nomination was the highest-rated event of the week for the Democratic National Convention, while drawing a smaller audience than Hillary Clinton’s speech at the convention in 2016, according to early estimates from Nielsen Media Research.Biden’s speech was watched by 21.8 million people on TV, according to initial figures from Nielsen, beating out the early numbers for other major speeches at the convention earlier in the week. The figure, which does not include online streaming of the speech, is expected to grow when additional networks are added.The early estimate for Thursday’s TV audience is a slight uptick from the previous night, when Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) delivered her acceptance speech to be Biden’s running mate and former President Obama spoke in support of his former vice president.Still, the initial numbers mark a 21 percent drop from Clinton’s speech at the convention in 2016, when she accepted the Democratic nomination that year. It is also more than 38 percent lower than President Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention four years ago, which drew 34.9 million viewers.
You would never know this if you listened to people at CNN, MSNBC, and other networks who gushed over speeches all week, from Michelle Obama to Joe Biden.
Concha offered more clarifications about ratings on Twitter:
Earlier in the week, things were even worse compared to four years ago.
Jordan Davidson wrote at The Federalist:
DNC Viewership On TV Networks Tumbles 48 Percent From 2016Democratic National Convention night two viewership was down at least 48 percent from broadcasts of the same night in 2016, even though many Americans are subject to government restrictions keeping them cooped up at home far more this year. According to reports, the top six broadcast networks, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, and CNN, only received 6.13 million viewers combined during air time of the convention this year.To put it in perspective, “America’s Got Talent” received more views during its scheduled hour on NBC than any other network individually recorded during the second night of the DNC.
A Biden campaign spokesman claims that the digital stream numbers were good:
That could be true, but the view count numbers on the DNC 2020 YouTube Channel are far from impressive.
It’ll be fascinating to compare the numbers for the Republican National Convention at the end of next week.
Featured image via YouTube.
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