Ok so this is pretty short one, sorry about that.
At a time when more and more people turning to the web for news and some live events, it looks like last night's SOTU speech was a success in terms of TV viewership, of course that is in addition to the success in delivering one of the best speeches he has given. From Nielsen.com :
48 Million Watch President Obama’s First State of the Union Address.
January 28, 2010
On Wednesday, January 27, 2010 President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address was carried live from 9:00PM to approximately 10:20PM on 11 networks. The sum of average audience for those networks was 48,009,595 viewers. The networks carrying the address were ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, TEL, UNI, CNN, BET, CNBC, FOXNC, and MSNBC.
Yes, it is less than Pres. G.W's first SOTU and more than Pres. Clinton's first SOTU
B. Obama 48,009,595
G.W. Bush 51,773,000
Clinton 45,800,000
With all the non-stop negative news cycles that dominated the weeks leading up to this SOTU, the poll numbers and everything in between, you would think no one would be interested to listen anymore speech, not to mention the longest he has ever delivered. Well the numbers are in and we have a winner!