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DNC Coverage Ratings Decline Wednesday Night

Jul 29, 2004  •  Post A Comment

The Democrats have got to be hoping that vice presidential candidate John Edwards will have more halo effect at the ballot box than he did on TV Wednesday night, when interest in TV coverage of the Democratic National Convention waned, according to data from Nielsen Media Research.

CNN outdrew rival Fox News Channel for the third straight night, but CNN, like Fox and MSNBC, saw a decline in ratings compared with Tuesday night.

The broadcast networks, which had offered no prime-time broadcast coverage of the convention Tuesday, were back with an hour each; and NBC News (with an average 4.153 million viewers, down from 4.532 million Monday) won that head-to-head competition by a little less than 100,000 viewers over ABC News (4.057 million viewers, down from 4.403 million Monday), and CBS News (3.853 million, down from 4.552 million Monday).

CNN’s average for the 8-11p.m. prime-time block Wednesday was 2.169 million viewers (down from 2.362 million viewers Tuesday), with Fox News snapped back into second place with an average 1.770 million viewers (down from Tuesday’s 2.340 million) and MSNBC back in third place with an average 1.068 million (down from 1.404 million Tuesday).

In the 10 p.m. hour that featured speeches by VP nominee John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth, CNN averaged 2.890 million viewers, followed by Fox (1.640 million) and MSNBC (1.393 million). Those figures also are down night to night.

Even PBS prime-time coverage showed night-to-night erosion, averaging a 2.5 household rating in data from 49 stations in metered markets compared a 2.9 rating in 45 markets Tuesday.