THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2024
In a much larger nation: Viewership figures are in for Tuesday night's debate.
How many people watched the event? According to NBC News (and everyone else), the very fine people at Nielsen have announced a familiar figure:
Harris-Trump debate nabs more than 67 million viewers, Nielsen says
The debate stage clash between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump drew an estimated 67.1 million viewers, according to the media analytics company Nielsen.
The estimated viewership improved on the ratings for the match-up between Trump and President Joe Biden in late June, which attracted roughly 51.3 million viewers—and effectively derailed Biden's re-election bid.
ABC hosted and aired the Harris-Trump faceoff, which was simulcast on 17 networks, including NBC and MSNBC, according to Nielsen.
[...]
Nielsen earlier reported that 57.5 million people watched Harris and Trump, adding that final numbers would be released later. The data did not include the number of people who followed the debate via social media, news websites or streaming platforms.
Sure enough! Once they included the streamers, the figure came to 67.1 million people.
As we noted yesterday, this wasn't exactly a first. Way back at the dawn of time, Theodore White reported these viewership numbers for the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates:
WHITE (page 283): By mid-September all had been arranged. There would be four debates—on September 26th, October 7th, October 13th and October 21st. The first would be produced by CBS out of Chicago, the second by NBC out of Washington, the third by ABC out of New York and Los Angeles and the fourth, again by ABC, out of New York.
In the event, when all was over, the audience exceeded the wildest fancies and claims of the television networks. Each individual broadcast averaged an audience set at a low of 65,000,000 and a high of 70,000,000. The greatest previous audience in television history had been for the climactic game of the 1959 World Series, when an estimated 90,000,000 Americans had tuned in to watch...
It looks like each of those debates was viewed by roughly 67 million people, even way back then! You can begin to spot a fairly large difference here:
United States population:
1960 census: 179.3 million
2024 estimate: 345.4 million
Say what? With almost twice as many people, the same old number tuned in?
In fairness, there was nothing else you could watch back then. There was no History Channel, tempting eggheads with such scholarly fare as Ice Road Truckers and Swamp People.
There was no fine arts channel like Bravo, prying eyeballs away from the hopefuls with The Real Housewives of Wherever We're Able to Find Them.
On Tuesday, we quoted Harper Lee in a second well-known book from that same era, a book in which she looked back to an even earlier period:
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with.
Even as late as 1960, is that why so many people tuned in? Was there just nowhere else to go? Were we just less distracted back then?
TRUMP (9/10/24): People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go. And the people that do go, she's busing them in and paying them to be there.
On these matters, Bob seems to assume a lot of people believe this rather obvious BS from Trump. There are other, perhaps darker possibilities concerning Bob’s friends and neighbors: perhaps they don’t care because the people Trump lies about often have different colored skin and need to be taken down a peg. Perhaps they generally just don’t like those sort of people. Oh, some are OK, as long as they never complain or imply the white people ever did anything wrong.
ReplyDeleteOr, they think it is funny when he lies, and they enjoy politics as an entertainment like wrestling.
Or, they don’t really like it when he lies but they think both sides lie and they think he is a great leader.
Or they have always been Republicans in their families and they don’t pay much attention. Surely there are people like this on both sides.
Or they are stupid.
Some may believe Trump but there are other possibilities.
Why are proportionately fewer people watching political debates?
ReplyDeleteIn 1960, the idea of a televised presidential debate was novel. Such a momentous meeting of candidates in public had never before been attempted or maybe even imagined.
Today, we've seen dozens of presidential debates. Some of us have learned that little of consequence is likely to be said. The candidates will pretend to listen to the questions and will quickly pivot to their own prepared remarks--thoughts we've already heard before the debate even begins.
Also, with the availability of streaming, the internet, and video recording devices, many folks can choose to watch the entire debate or just the highlights at a tine of their choosing.
Finally, the working world today differs from what it was 60 years ago. When I was a child, I remember that businesses in our town began closing their doors around 5 or 6 in the evening. The rare pharmacy might remain open until the late, late hour of 9 p.m. Far more people were at home, in front of their TV sets at night in the yore. Today, more of us have work that extends well beyond what is still anachronistically called "business hours."
The world changes. It's not always a sign of societal decline when things are different from what we're used to.
Some people can't stand to watch the debates because the last nine years an unhinged old man has been allowed to holler over everybody on stage with a fire hose of bullshit.
DeleteLol. "In fairness, there was nothing else you could watch back then. There was no History Channel, tempting eggheads with such scholarly fare as Ice Road Truckers and Swamp People."
ReplyDeleteDiC - No tax on tips. No tax on overtime. What effect will these policies have on the deficit, do you think. What effect on Social Security solvency?
ReplyDeleteTipped workers constitute 2.5% of the total workforce in the US, and about a third of such workers make too little to be taxed anyway. The idea is generally panned by economists, which is not surprising since Trump was the first to promote it while soliciting votes among workers in Las Vegas. Not collecting taxes on relatively low wage earners that constitute well under 2% of the workforce is not going to make it or break it for social security. When Trump tips his caddie with cash do you think that is recorded as taxable income? Whatever negative revenue impact that not taxing tips has on the IRS will be more than compensated for by increased taxes on the wealthy under Harris, and will not be offset by such tax increases via Trump.
Delete"When Trump tips his caddie..."
DeleteObjection! Assumes facts not in evidence.
It turns out that manipulating the scorecard pays well.
DeleteOf course, he requires them to sign nondisclosure agreements.
DeleteTrump tipping his caddy is called hush money.
DeleteI agree DG
ReplyDeleteThe DJIA was up 235 points yesterday. It’s gotta be hard as Trump supporters to be continuously rooting against your 401k.
ReplyDeleteWhenever Trump needs a shoulder to cry on he can always count on the crazies. But reaching out to a 9/11 conspiracy nutcase on 9/12 is, well, somewhat untimely. Laura Loomer is so fringe that she orbits outside of that territory inhabited by Marjorie Taylor Greene (who hates her for that). Loomer having Trump's ear for any amount of time will have his team begging him to ditch her and get back to watching the tube for updates on those dog eating Haitians.
ReplyDeleteTop notch comment.
ReplyDeleteSorry, misspoke. Loomer was invited on his jet to go to the debate! Maybe the Haitian eating dog story comes into focus there. And while Trump can claim ignorance of the identity of a white supremacist he dined with along with Ye, there is no wiggle room in this case. Trump invited this garbage to join him knowing full well who she is. A 9/11 conspiracy nutcase with him for the 9/11 remembrance . Well played.
ReplyDelete