Now that the PBS numbers have been included in the ratings it looks like a tie between the audiences watching the acceptance speeches by Barack Obama and John McCain with each estimated at having 42.4 million viewers. There is no count for C-SPAN. Obama’s speech was also given at the start of a holiday weekend, possibly reducing his audience. (I watched with a small group in our suite at Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island as we knocked off a bottle of Bailey’s. Thanks to picking up a Slingbox bofore leaving on vacation I also managed to catch other parts of the convention on line over my Palm while out of the room.)
Fox had the highest ratings for the Republican convention while CNN had the highest ratings for the Democratic convention. Bill O’Reilly received his second highest ratings ever for the first night of his interview with Obama.
Interest of this magnitude in the race is encouraging, suggesting large numbers will also follow the campaign through the fall. Hopefully they will also watch critically, noticing that John McCain’s new slogan might be “American First, Truth Second.” Factcheck.org has exposed many of the untrue statements in McCain’s acceptance speech. McCain has distorted the truth so badly about Obama’s proposals that even Fox News has pointed out McCain’s dishonesty on two occasions that I’m aware of.
I am glad so many people tuned into the McCain speech to hear basically:
I. Me. I. I. I. Me. POW. I. I. I. Me.
And god bless me…I mean America.
People are more engaged these days, If they wanted to hear about policy, McCain left them wanting.
And the media is starting to cool (well, some at least). There have been three or four instances of Fox calling them out (yeah, up is down, black is white, and my dog just turned into a cat) with Chris Wallace, just this morning, shutting down Rick Davis’ talking points with “This works better if you let me ask the question.”
McCain screwed his Base (the media – with or without sprinkles on top) and many are not happy. Take a look at the Frank Rich OpEd “Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage.” Scathing.