Numbers just released by Nielsen Media Research show the average per night viewership of the just concluded Republican National Convention set a record this week topping the audience for the previous week's Democratic National Convention by more than 4 million viewers each evening.
This is quite different than the media meme that Americans are disinterested in politics, in particular Republicans, wouldn't you agree?
As reported by the Associated Press Friday (emphasis added, photo courtesy AP):
This week's ratings, with an average of 34.5 million viewers watching the GOP convention over three days, proved people are becoming more interested in what the Republicans have to say. The Democrats had an average audience of 30.2 million over four days, Nielsen said.
"No one really thought they had it in them in terms of pulling off this amazing convention," said Jay Wallace, vice president for news and editorial at Fox News Channel. But Hurricane Gustav pulled people into the news networks over the weekend, he said. People were also intensely curious about McCain's pick of Palin as a running mate, he said.
Nielsen said that 38.9 million people watched McCain accept the GOP nomination Thursday on either ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel or MSNBC. PBS, which has a more imprecise estimate based on samples in a few big cities, said 3.5 million watched on its network.
Last week, Obama's speech in Denver was seen by 38.4 million on 10 different commercial networks, and an additional 4 million on PBS.
Shhhhh. If you listen closely, you can hear liberal media elites from New York to Los Angeles crying in their beer.
Isn't it glorious?
