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.
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.
Posted by: Steve Goulet | January 23, 2009 at 09:08 AM
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.
Posted by: Stu | January 23, 2009 at 10:05 AM
Akamai was streaming 7.7 million video feeds.
Posted by: Steve Goulet | January 23, 2009 at 11:41 AM