Update: The overnight total for the election night TV viewership was a record 71.5 million.
| Scoreboard |  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Viewers (million) | 13.63 | 13.10 | 8.00 | 5.26 | 4.34 | 2.64 |
| Rating/Share: Adults 18-49 | 4.7/10 | 4.8/10 | 2.6/5 | 2.3/5 | 1.9/4 | 1.3/3 |
| Rating/Share: Adults 18-34 | 4.0/9 | 4.5/10 | 2.0/4 | 2.5/6 | 1.9/4 | 1.8/4 |
Forty four million plus on average watched the election coverage on the above mentioned broadcast networks. I think it’s best to hold off on comparing previous years until the cable news numbers are factored in as well. But as mentioned in an earlier post, with the election not being very close and McCain conceding fairly early, it should be no surprise if there were fewer viewers than in 2004. It was a very historic night, but it just lacked any drama around “who’s gonna win!?”
ABC bettered NBC by roughly a half million people on average, but NBC narrowly defeated ABC among 18-49 year olds, and had an even wider margin of victory among 18-34 year olds. CBS was a distant third place with 8 million on average and equally far behind in the age demographics. Fox trailed CBS, but it may well be that the Fox News Channel beat the Fox broadcast network. We’ll find out later, along with results for CNN, MSNBC, etc. If some of the early metered market data holds up in the finals, both CNN and Fox News will have will have outpaced CBS.
Oh yeah, and the CW ran 90210 and Privileged…
Full details:
| Time | Net | Show | Viewers (Millons) | 18-49 Rating/Share | 18-34 Rating/Share |
| 8:00 | NBC | NBC News Election Night 2008 | 13.05 | 4.4/10 | 3.8/9 |
| ABC | ABC News – Vote 2008 | 12.87 | 4.2/9 | 3.5/8 | |
| CBS | Campaign ‘08: Election Night | 8.19 | 2.5/5 | 1.9/4 | |
| FOX | You Decide 2008 | 5.25 | 2.2/5 | 2.6/6 | |
| UNI | Destino 2008: Noche de Elecciones | 4.51 | 1.9/4 | 1.9/5 | |
| CW | 90210 | 3.02 | 1.4/3 | 2.0/5 | |
| 9:00 | ABC | ABC News – Vote 2008 | 14.51 | 5.0/10 | 4.2/9 |
| NBC | NBC News Election Night 2008 | 13.81 | 5.1/10 | 4.8/10 | |
| CBS | Campaign ‘08: Election Night | 8.32 | 2.7/5 | 2.1/5 | |
| FOX | You Decide 2008 | 5.28 | 2.3/5 | 2.4/5 | |
| UNI | Destino 2008: Noche de Elecciones | 4.68 | 2.0/4 | 2.1/4 | |
| CW | Privileged | 2.26 | 1.1/2 | 1.5/3 | |
| 10:00 | ABC | ABC News – Vote 2008 | 13.51 | 5.0/11 | 4.4/10 |
| NBC | NBC News Election Night 2008 | 12.44 | 4.8/10 | 4.8/10 | |
| CBS | Campaign ‘08: Election Night | 7.50 | 2.4/5 | 2.1/5 | |
| UNI | Destino 2008: Noche de Elecciones | 3.84 | 1.7/4 | 1.8/4 |
Shows are sorted by viewers in each time slot.
Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2008 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
Definitions:
Fast Affiliate Ratings: These first national ratings, including demographics, are available at approximately 11 AM (ET) the day after telecast, and are released to subscribing customers daily. These data, from the National People Meter sample, are strictly time-period information, based on the normal broadcast network feed, and include all programming on the affiliated stations, sometimes including network programming, sometimes not. The figures may include stations that did not air the entire network feed, as well as local news breaks or cutaways for local coverage or other programming. Fast Affiliate ratings are not as useful for live programs and are likely to differ significantly from the final results, because the data reflect normal broadcast feed patterns. For example, with a World Series game, Fast Affiliate Ratings would include whatever aired from 8-11PM on affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone, following the live football game, but not game coverage that begins at 5PM PT. The same would be true of Presidential debates as well as live award shows and breaking news reports.
Rating: Estimated percentage of the universe of TV households (or other specified group) tuned to a program in the average minute. Ratings are expressed as a percent.
Share (of Audience): The percent of households (or persons) using television who are tuned to a specific program, station or network in a specific area at a specific time. (See also, Rating, which represents tuning or viewing as a percent of the entire population being measured.)
Time Shifted Viewing – Program ratings for national sources are produced in three streams of data – Live, Live+Same Day (Live+SD) and Live+7 Day. Time shifted figures account for incremental viewing that takes place with DVRs which are currently in approximately 24.4% of all U.S. TV households. Live+Same Day (Live+SD) include viewing during the same broadcast day as the original telecast, with a cut-off of 3:00AM local time when meters transmit daily viewing to Nielsen for processing. Live+7 Day ratings include incremental viewing that takes place during the 7 days following a telecast.
For more information see Numbers 101.
Great Numbers for ABC.
Also, THE CW had a prett good night also.
wow.. CBS skews really really old
And I think the finals will tell a diferent story.. there was a lot of zapping and flipping channels last night.
I find it interesting that CBS has so many solid regular viewers (CSI’s, CM, NCIS, WAT, even 60 Minutes) who apparently prefer to get their news elsewhere?
clutz, Couric doesn’t match their demo.
Yeah, the old people doesnt like Couric.
CBS is for old people. no one young watches it.
Viewers really make it a point to ignore Katie Couric. No one watches her on the Evening News and now they avoided her during her first presidential election coverage on CBS! They have to let her go ASAP! They can’t withstand anymore record low numbers for their news division because of her.
Great job to ABC News though. I was tuned into them all night, and hated that I had to watch my local news programming at 11, which never happens. I waited patiently until ABC returned at 11:35pm. Charlie, Diane and George were like comfort food last night.
Errol, the local news cutting in at 11 was so annoying. Especially since it was right when ABC was about to announce that Obama won. The coverage on my local ABC was no where near as good. And we had to wait until 12 for it to go back to national coverage.
CBS had similar problems with no one watching Dan Rather.
Rather was being watched, but not with the same amount of viewers as ABC and NBC. I believe at that time ABC/NBC were averaging 8 or 9 million viewers each night, to Dan’s 7 million. Katie is just under 6 million right now. That’s a problem.
Is Katie Couric really that off-putting to people?
How could she have gotten so out of touch with TV viewers when she famously anchored the “Today” show for so many years?
I would have watched CBS’ election coverage last night if their HD coverage had been any good…
Those side pillars that took up half the screen on the side was such a stupid idea and was the reason I changed the channel.
I watched CNN HD instead.
It’s good to see CBS kicked down every once in a while.
I didn’t know that CBS has a news division! Once Walter Cronkite left, CBS News went down the tubes.
Alex, I don’t know about Katie Couric, but there are definitely people who are very popular in more talk show type settings, who can’t make it in news. There is a local anchor here who spent years on a local Entertainment Tonight type show before moving on to the evening news. Personally, I cannot watch her on the news. She just doesn’t fit the part.
ABC NEWS WAS THE BEST IN ELECTION COVERAGE FROM 8:00 PM TIL 2:00 AM EST..THEY HAD ALL THE NEWS PERSONALITIES FROM EVERY ABC NEWS SHOW…CHARLIE GIBSON AND DIANE SAWYER, GREAT JOB AND COVERAGE. THANKS FROM ABC AFFILATE WCVB CHANNEL 5 BOSTON.
I agree.. ABC NEWS was the best, second was CNN.
Anybody have in numbers for Indecision 2008?
Crash, we may very well see those numbers in a press release, but they won’t make the threshold of the cable show data we get on a regular basis.
ABC’s graphics were by far the easiest to read.
Ok, it is official Katie Couric needs to be fired. She lost to not only CNN and FOX News in total viewers, but to freakin’ Telemundo!!!
http://www.thrfeed.com/2008/11/election-rating.html
ABC 13,135,000
CNN 12,304,000
NBC 12,018,000
FxNews 9,044,000
Telemn 7,898,148
CBS 7,829,000
MSNBC 5,889,000
FOX 5,137,000
Univis 4,074,654
Oh, and NBC will claim victory via the tired “networks of NBC” banner. Excluding CNBC, 28.5 million people watched NBC networks for Election coverage (NBC, Telemundo, MSNBC).
Errol, Katie’s as bad as that, but you gave Telemundo an extra digit, they had 790,000
Or maybe it was James’s mistake that you copied and he later edited.
Here are the numbers from Hibberd:
ABC 13,135,000
CNN 12,304,000
NBC 12,018,000
FxNews 9,044,000
CBS 7,829,000
MSNBC 5,889,000
FOX 5,137,000
Univis 4,074,654
Telemn 790,000
BET 438,000
CNBC 391,000
BBCA 224,000
WGN 115,000
TVOne 88,000
Errol….I’m sure NBC will try to tout something like that. Pretty sad, huh?
It was just a toss up in what channel to watch… well, anything but FauxNews. But after flipping around and getting bored with CNN and MSNBC, we just left it on NBC.
I’m not really a fan of Couric or anything, but I don’t find anything particularly offputting about her either. She just reads the copy in front of her, what’s so unpalatable about that relative to any other news anchor? I guess it really does make a difference…
CBS is the most watched network and they can’t get people to watch their news coverage! Oh dear. If you think about it ABC, NBC and CBS should make up the top 3, the fact that ABC was the only channel not to be beaten by a cable station is quite telling for the other main network’s coverage.
I don’t think that there’s been a big problem with Couric, just no improvement after a lot of initial hullabaloo. CBS was in third place when she took over and they’re in third now.
As to folks watching news on a different network than they watch entertainment programming, why is that surprising at all to anyone? Who out there makes program choices by network? As in, “I prefer shows on ABC, so I’m not going to watch CBS”.
With normal night coverage, does it go like 6pm local/state news, 6.30 national news, 7-8 syndication, 8pm onwards national programming?
Thanks, Bill.
I’ve really enjoyed The Daily Show and The Colbert Report’s election coverage.
Actually, I just c/p’d what they initially had. They have since changed it with Telemundo getting under a million viewers. Though it doesn’t change the fact that NBC will claim “the networks of NBC” won the election coverage. If ABC/CNN merged, we’d have had over 25 million viewers watching both of them. Though, at the rate ABC News is going they don’t need to merge with anyone.
NBC does me proud
NETWORKS OF NBC DRAW MORE THAN 18 MILLION VIEWERS ON ELECTION NIGHT
Published: November 5, 2008
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photo
MORE THAN 18.741 MILLION AMERICANS TURN TO THE NETWORKS OF NBC TO WITNESS
HISTORY BEING MADE
DURING THE KEY 11PM – 1AM TIME PERIOD, MSNBC RANKED #2 AMONG THE CABLE NEWS NETWORKS WITH 6.57 MILLION VIEWERS
MSNBC.COM SHATTERS SITE RECORD WITH NEARLY
250 MILLION PAGE VIEWS
New York, N.Y. – At the culmination of one of the most exciting presidential races of all time, more than 18.741 million Americans turned to the networks of NBC to witness history being made as Senator Barack Obama became the first African American ever to be elected president of the United States. With Brian Williams anchoring coverage on NBC News along with Tom Brokaw and Andrea Mitchell, the network drew more than 12.439 viewers, according to Nielsen Fast Nationals 8-11:30 pm.
MSNBC’s election night coverage with David Gregory, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and Eugene Robinson, attracted 5.89 million viewers in primetime, up 108% over election night 2004 and up 99% over 2000. In the 25-54 demographic, MSNBC averaged 2.66 million viewers in primetime. Last night was MSNBC’s best night ever among adults 25-54 in primetime.
During the key 11 pm –1 am time period, during which the presidential race was called and both Senator McCain and President-elect Obama spoke, MSNBC ranked #2 among the cable news networks with 6.57 million viewers, while Fox News averaged 5.39 million and CNN 13.17 million.
CNBC from 8 pm -1 am averaged 411,000 total viewers, which is 75% above its 4th-quarter average.
Msnbc.com shattered site records on Election Day, with nearly 250 million page views and over 20 million unique visitors. The record-breaking spike in page views was more than twice the traffic of election day 2004 and more than four times the traffic of the 2006 mid-term election. This marks the site’s highest traffic day in its 12-year history for both page views and unique visitors.
For some unexplainable reason, CBS news is not highly regarded despite having great newsreporters. I remember when 60 minutes was unstoppable in the ratings. Now, it’s just an aftethought that people accidentally tune into whenever there’s a great football game on before it.
CBS is for old ppl
Bill, is this the first time in recent memory that NBC has lost the Election Night ratings battle?
I’m a bit confused about why CBS News rates so lowly. After Kronkite left and Rather took over wasn’t it still the number 1 main evening news bulletin? What caused it to go down?