I’m sure some will argue with my methodology (and they might be right) but here is how I figure it.
On the first night of their respective conventions, the Republicans had an extra million viewers than the Democrats on the major cable channels.
DNC
FOX …..1,633,000
CNN …..2,010,000
MSNBC…1,149,000
———————
Total ….4,792,000
RNC
FOX …..3,717,000
CNN …..1,230,000
MSNBC…..819,000
———————
Total…..5,766,000
My method is crude but if ya ask me, 1,000,000 more people watching is good news.
]]>< 
An equally crude piece of analysis:
Look at the numbers for the liberal outlets (CNN, MSNBC) and the conservative FoxNews: the liberal outlets lost a million viewers while Fox gained 2 million — could this be an indication of greater interest among the GOP base than the Dem base?
Like I said, crude analysis. But a fair question, I think.
Sounds like a bunch of undecideds tuned in and they are leaning right.
Or moonbats expecting a train wreck.
Or, it just means your average Democrat has about a 30-second attention span.
Which, come to think of it, would explain a lot.
McCain, Giuliani and Schwarzenegger were excellent, high-profile choices to kick things off. By comparison, I remember the DNC early speeches were given by….um….
Damn…I can’t recall.
Maybe I’m missing something by not watching. Conventions remind me of circuses only the clowns aren’t as funny.
Paul, it might just be something even simpler, needing no analysis at all.
Go back and look at the photos of the delegates Party functionaries and speakers of the DNC.
Do the same with the RNC. Notice the facial expressions.
People don’t LIKE to be around bitter, angry folks, even over the TV.
Wasn’t the DNC’s first night also shown on the networks? That could have sucked away some viewers. I think you’d need to compare RNC Mon to DNC Tues and/or vice versa.
The good news is that more are watching the Reps than the Dems. The bad news is I am watching Kerry address the vets, and he looks good, sincere, reasonable, human. What happened to the pompous poseur? Maybe he got the shit kicked out of him, got some humility, and is losing his arrogant pompousness. Not good news, to me.
The good news is that more are watching the Reps than the Dems. The bad news is I am watching Kerry address the vets, and he looks good, sincere, reasonable, human. What happened to the pompous poseur? Maybe he got the shit kicked out of him, got some humility, and is losing his arrogant pompousness. Not good news, to me.
thedragonflies, Kerry is “sincere, reasonable, human”? He isn’t capable of those things. I’m watching him too, and he seems like the same old Kerry to me.
Know thy enemy.
I rewound my Tivo and Kerry looks pathetic.
“sincere, reasonable, human” ain’t what I saw.
All he did was claim we were all going to die if Bush stayed in office.
I overheard Kerry’s Legion speech today, not by choice. He sounded like a funeral director. That man could sing “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” and sound like he was giving condolences to the mourning widow who just discovered that her late husband had stopped paying his life insurance premium without telling her.
I may have been too pessimistic. Indeed, as his speech continued, he got into giving some of his old stump speech rhetoric and reverted to form, pompous and smirky. The first few minutes he seemed to be talking more candidly, and, leaving the content out of it and just looking at it for tone, he seemed pretty normal. My fear is that he might be able to get into a conversational mode in the debates and not live down to my expectations of pompous arrogant blatherer.
Green is correct. The networks carried night 1 of the DNC but not night 2. The referse holds for the RNC–night 1 was not carried, but night 2 was.
Presumably, more than 1 million people were watching the DNC coverage on ABC, NBC, and CBS, especially if nearly 5 million were watching the cable news channels, so it’s likely the DNC day 1 had more watchers than RNC day 1. Likely the reverse will hold for Day 2.
This stinks, because the dems had 4 (relatively) good speakers on their Day 1, and only 1 especially good speaker on Day 2. the RNC however had two of its biggest guns on Monday, but only one really big gun on Tuesday.