Friday, August 29, 2008

But Back To Last Night

ThinkProgress reports:

Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) acceptance speech last night reached a quarter of America’s households, according to Nielsen Media Research. In all, with over 38 million viewers, “more people watched Obama speak than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final “American Idol” or the Academy Awards this year.” The AP notes that “Obama’s audience might be higher,” since Nielsen didn’t estimate how many people watched on PBS or C-SPAN.

And don't forget about all the super-cool elites who don't have TVs and instead watched the live stream of the convention on their computers.

Or dorks, if you prefer. I'm cool with labels.

8 comments:

John Evo said...

I was one of those on CSPAN. After the first day of the convention I switched over there and never looked back.

Maybe I should have though. Do I really know what went on, without the insights I could have gotten from Charlie Gibson or Sean Hannity?

bjkeefe said...

LOL!

As I understand it, there was comedy gold all over the place, from the MSNBC squabbling to the never-ending stream of dumbness flowing from Bill Kristol.

Fortunately, we have YouTube. The truth is out there, if you think you can handle it.

How was C-SPAN? Did they have no commentators at all?

I watched some of their speech footage as they posted it on YouTube, and I was pleased to see that they were doing audience shots, and not using just one fixed camera. But that second camera might have maxed out their budget. ;^)

bjkeefe said...

Come to think of it, you could probably put together a hilarious 15 minute mashup of the best of the boneheads, just by Googling and skimming a few blogs. I keep coming across snippets posted all over the place.

Probably TPM already has this in the can.

John Evo said...

CSPAN - gavel to gavel, no comment. Just watched people walking around the stages between speeches, etc. Very cool for doing other things like reading or being on the net. They start talking and I look up. If it's worth it, I pay attention. If not, I go back to what I was doing until something interesting happens.

bjkeefe said...

Nice. The livestream from MSNBC was like that, too.

Another bit of data: Obama's speech already has over 200,000 views on YouTube. If I understand correctly, YouTube only counts views for videos watched in their entirety. And that's just the one that the campaign itself posted. There are a number of others, independently posted.

Steve Benen pointed out another mode that doesn't get counted, either: DVRs. How many people do you think were working late or out partying, and caught it via TiVo?

bjkeefe said...

Update: Now over 300,000 YouTube views.

John Evo said...

And let's remember that it wasn't up on YouTube for a while. Exterminator was so glowing in his review (and he is such a natural cynic) that I almost thought I had seen a different speech. So I went back the next morning to watch the video, but not on YouTube. I watched in on MSNBC. I know most of the others had the full video as well. I think it's safe to guess that 50 Million have seen it. Maybe more.

335,000

bjkeefe said...

Did the Ex man post his review? I didn't see it. Or are you talking about a conversation you had offline?

ShareThis