Well, if you watched Fox, and we did too, what are these people talking about...(ours if Fox cable)...BTW, note that the number for the si-fi thing has gone from 14 mm this am's report to now 17mm this afternoon....Geeze, probably will be 20mm by tonight...The major networks wonder why their ratings are down...they have been taking too many lessons in "idiotboximagery" and "weBELIEVEtheFLUFFstuffwearetellingyou" in the last 8 years...
I still haven't seen how many actual minutes EACH candidate spoke...
KLP
Wednesday October 4 4:59 PM ET
Presidential debate ratings lowest ever-network
By Emma-Kate Symons
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The first presidential debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush on Tuesday night may have
drawn fewer Americans to their TV screens than at any time since Kennedy and Nixon kicked off the modern televised election
campaign in 1960, a network executive said.
Based on preliminary figures provided by Nielsen Media Research, an average of 35 million people watched Democrat
candidate Gore debate the Republicans' Bush at any one time during the 90 minutes it lasted, according to CBS research
executive David Poltrack.
This compares with 46.1 million viewers for the first Clinton-Dole debate in 1996, which at that time was the lowest ever
recorded for the crucial first tussle. The other two Gore-Bush debates are scheduled for the next two weeks.
``It would appear that this will be the lowest audience of any presidential debate,'' said Poltrack. ``It's fairly certain that the final
number is going to come in below 46 million and probably the average audience is about 35 million.''
Nielsen will release final national ratings figures later Wednesday including West Coast viewers, PBS and CNN viewers, as
well as those approximately one-third of NBC affiliates that screened the debate rather than baseball.
Network executives and analysts said that one of the key reasons for the poor ratings was that for the first time two major
networks, Fox and NBC, chose to screen sports and entertainment rather than the live debate.
The audience for presidential debates has gradually declined since 1960, despite different methods for collecting ratings and the
high audience for the 1992 Clinton-Bush-Perot debates, according to Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In
1960, the first debate garnered 66.4 million viewers.
However, both CBS and ABC increased their share of ratings in the first debate of campaign 2000 compared with 1996, after
NBC and Fox decided to screen sport and entertainment. In 1996 all the networks carried the first presidential debate.
Fox's premiere of James Cameron's science-fiction thriller Dark Angel attracted an average 17 million viewers, based on
preliminary ratings provided by Nielsen, Poltrack said.
No official ratings for NBC's American League baseball playoff between the New York Yankees and Oakland Athletics were
immediately available, but Poltrack estimated between 7 and 8 million viewers chose sport over the first presidential debate.
He said preliminary figures, including the 48 top TV markets, showed ABC's debate coverage attracted about 18.5 million
viewers, to CBS's 12.7 million.
Reuters/Variety REUTERS |
