Another nail in the coffin of freedom

Did you notice the biggest news item to not make the news?

Dutch parliamentarian and filmmaker, Geert Wilders, is being charged in Europe as a criminal for making a 15 minute film called "Fitna" which is mostly verses of the Koran and clips of Imams' harsh rhetoric.

Wilder's goal was to influence Muslims to expunge hate speech from their scriptures. People like Bill Maher and Sam Harris better watch themselves for criticizing religion. Or perhaps these laws only apply to critics of Islam.

On the other hand, today's news was filled with stories about the great things Obama wants to do. His most significant deed was to wisely affirm his intent to follow George Bush's policies towards Israel and Palestinians.

The wire services reported that 38 million Americans (12%) watched the inauguration, just short of the record Reagan set in 1981 of 42 million Americans (18%). I watched neither.

President	Date	Viewers	Population	Percent
Ronald Reagan	Tuesday, January 20, 1981	41,800,260	229,465,714	18%
Jimmy Carter	Thursday, January 20, 1977	34,127,090	220,239,425	15%
Richard Nixon	Monday, January 20, 1969	27,007,700	202,676,946	13%
Barack Obama	Tuesday, January 20, 2009	37,793,008	305,666,957	12%
Bill Clinton	Wednesday, January 20, 1993	29,721,041	257,782,608	12%
George W. Bush	Saturday, January 20, 2001	29,008,200	285,039,803	10%
Ronald Reagan	Sunday, January 20, 1985	25,053,886	257,782,608	10%
George H.W. Bush	Friday, January 20, 1989	23,316,325	246,819,230	9%
Bill Clinton	Monday, January 20, 1997	21,583,000	267,783,607	8%
George W. Bush	Thursday, January 20, 2005	15,536,652	295,560,549	5%

I created this table based on Nielsen estimates and Census Bureau statistics. The first TV broadcast inauguration was President Truman in 1949 and a US population of 149 million.

Comments

[Steve Goulet]

Strange decision by the Dutch, and unusual for them.

Nice work on the stats. It would be interesting to include internet viewers somehow. Akamai is saying that they set a record for most silmultaneous streaming video connections during the inauguration: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10146825-2.html

We tried to watch over the internet in our conference room and couldn't find a stream that would work effectively. Ended up using a SlingBox to watch it.

[Stu]

Yeah - I agree I commented on that over at Nielsen. I think the bigger factor would be to include radio since over time that had a much bigger market share and now Internet and other media have eaten into that.

I feel confident that the number would probably still hold up - Internet views are estimated in the thousands, and much of the audience in the past would have been over the radio especially during the work week.

[Steve Goulet]

Akamai was streaming 7.7 million video feeds.