No one wants to watch the GOP convention

Just hitting this again, because I missed it the first time, and if I'M missing stuff on my own site, so are many of you:

The second day of the Republican National Convention ended with NBC’s prime-time special winning a competition of small audiences.

According to preliminary national data from Nielsen Media Research, the three broadcast networks combined racked up a viewership of less than 11 million viewers, compared with the 14.8 million viewers who watched the networks’ coverage on the comparable night of the GOP gathering in 2004. That's also down from the 12.48 million who watched Senator Hillary Clinton’s call for unity among Democrats last week at that party's convention in Denver.

Two factors are worth noting: Hurricane Gustav's assault on Louisiana had essentially set back the Republicans’ attempts to get momentum by a day. Also, Democrat-turned-Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman’s speech, which closed the GOP show in St. Paul, Minn. Tuesday night, was not expected to be a stem-winder—and it lived up to expectations.

And Obama's speech?

The final night drew the largest audience so far for the Democrats (24.5% of all American homes), eclipsing the audience reach the three previous evenings.

That was at least 38 million people, because the numbers didn't include people who watched the convention on C-SPAN, PBS, or online. We'll see how McCain measures up tomorrow. Given that everyone -- even Republicans -- are saying this convention was about Palin, it looks like McCain is ending up a sad, pathetic afterthought.

UPDATE: We now have an even clearer picture of the ratings for Tuesday, and they look pretty bad for the GOP -- especially when compared to last Tuesday at the DNC:

Viewing numbers for the second night of the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., are out and it’s not particularly good news for the party.

Some 21.5 million people watched the Republican convention Tuesday night, Nielsen reported this afternoon, down slightly from the 22.1 million who watched second night coverage four years ago.

By comparison, almost 26 million people watched the second night of the Democratic convention last week, when Hillary Clinton addressed the crowd.

Ouch.  Fewer viewers than in 2004, and about 4.5 MILLION fewer viewers than watched the Democrats on the same night last week.  4.5 million Americans . . . that's about 46,000% bigger than Wasilla, Alaska.  --Trapper John