Oh sure, he’s now the president of the free world and made ground breaking history by being our first president of African descent, but Obama had to give it up to “American Idol” last night, at least in ratings.
After what seems like weeks of Obama coverage and an entire inaugural day of constant coverage, Americans turned their minds off for idol Idol. But, before that happened, Barack Obama pulled in some big television ratings.
In fact, his inauguration pulled in the biggest Nielsen numbers since 1981 when Ronald Reagan was sworn into office. According to the Nielsen estimates, about 29.2% of all American households were tuned in to see Obama place his hand on the Lincoln Bible as he was sworn in. Reagan pulled in 37.4% of the viewers, but his inauguration was only seen on three channels (ABC, CBS, and NBC). On the other hand, Obama coverage was on 15 different broadcast and cable networks. The Nielsen estimates didn’t include any viewers of streaming online coverage – something not even thought of when Reagan was president!
If you break the stats down, the Raleigh-Durham market (right down the street from me) had the most households tuning in with 51%. Washington D.C. came in second – I suppose those were the folks that didn’t want to fight the crowds. Seattle-Tacoma had the lowest percentage with 18.8 – maybe they were too far away from the action to care much.
By primetime though, Americans had apparently tired of the Obama coverage, including coverage of the inaugural balls on ABC. “American Idol” scored 22.4 million viewers. Can nothing stop this show? Maybe if we had Martians land at the Lincoln Memorial, the coverage of that could beat out the reality show juggernaut.
Those that weren’t tuned into Obama coverage or “American Idol” were watching another reality show – “Biggest Loser.” It managed to draw in 10.2 million viewers. Of course, the “Biggest Loser” numbers increased in its second hour after “American Idol” ended.
At 9:00 p.m., the Katie Couric special “Change and Challenge: The Inauguration of Barack Obama” pulled poor numbers. Her special only drew in 6.9 million viewers. That means almost 5 million viewers tuned out after a repeat of “NCIC” at 8:00 p.m.
NBC’s special coverage “Inauguration of Barack Obama” lost the “Biggest Loser” viewers as it had only 6.2 million.