Obama News Conference Enjoyed High Ratings
Posted Feb 11, 2009 at 3:34 PM by Maurice Berger
President Obama's Monday-night primtime news conference commanded relatively high ratings. According to Nielsen, "The conference was telecast live from 8 to 9PM on 8 networks achieving a combined 30.8 household rating with 49,455,133 viewers. The networks were ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, Univision, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC. Just weeks after his inauguration in 1993 President Bill Clinton also held a prime time news conference. That event focused on the economy and was carried by 4 networks on February 15, 1993. The sum of the audience of those networks was a 42.1 household rating with 64,300,000 viewers on average. On October 11, 2001, exactly a month after the attacks of September 11, President Bush held a prime time news conference that was carried by 7 networks. The sum of those networks’ audience from approximately 8-8:45PM was a 42.0 household rating with 64,813,000 viewers."
