Hillary Clinton Delivers Most-Watched "Meet The Press" In Almost Three Years

Hillary Clinton brought a ratings bonanza this "Meet the Press" this week, delivering an audience of 4.71 million viewers to the network — it's largest audience for a regularly-scheduled prgram since January 30, 2005 (excluding the MTP in February, 2006 during the Torino Olympics). The guest on Jan. 30/05, incidentally? Senator John Kerry, in his first TV interview after losing the 2004 election. (The other guest was NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, who had just taken over the anchor chair from Tom Brokaw the month before.)

According to Nielson (and via NBC press release), Clinton helped host Tim Russert positively trounce his Sunday-morning rivals, showing a whopping 69% more than second-place "Face The Nation" on CBS (2.8 million) and 70% more than the third-place "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" on ABC (2.77 million). According to NBC, these were the biggest margins clocked in ages, since September 2004 for CBS and November 2005 for ABC.

Perspective: That means that "Meet The Press" outdrew "Good Morning America" last week, which averaged 4.58 million viewers. That's a pretty good day for MTP. And for MSNBC, which pulled 631,000 viewers for its MTP replay later that day, and online with over 116,000 streams and 142,000 downloads.

MTP also beat Chris Wallace's "Fox News Sunday," which drew a 1.325 million-viewer audience — a factor of 256%.

Watch the netcast here, read the transcript here, and more about the Sunday talk shows on HuffPo's "TV Soundoff," which runs down the Sunday shows each week.

Comments

[NoScreenNamesLeft]

She was great on Meet The Press. Stood up to Russert...answered his questions...presented well reasoned, articulate responses...seemed very confident, competent and experienced.

Only with experience can we have change!

Go Hillary!

[ajax2]

I would have watched it, but I heard Tim Russert was on the show also.

[Ginzaman]

And in the G.E. boardroom, top management keeps repeating goddamnit she WILL be President! She WILL be President!

[OhgReaTone]

Russert is a success by his own definition - he wants ratings. He does not care about truth or about helping inform voters.
Ohg
http://thefiresidepost.com/2008/01/13/hillary-clinton-with-tim-russert/

[texastornado]

Hillary claims she's going to take care of health care. Check out how much the pharmcuticals have poured into her campain. She's arlready been bought.

CAMPAIN CONTRIBUTIONS FOR 2008 CANDIDATES:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.asp?Ind=H04

[marimba]

hillary gets the 50 minute hour - as has Giuliani, McCain and ROmney.

And Huckabee - at first up and 30 minutes of the 50 minute hour, is tagged [as is Ron Paul] as the only interviewee of a 2-person hour on Dec 30th as far as can be seen when one looks to the scrolling list of interviews just to the left of the current hour with Hillary.

Only when one undertakes the task of finding the drop down menus of archived MTP interviews does one discover that Obama received 19 minutes - once Huckabee's interview was wrapped up in December.

With Obama under the radar at MTP and thus invisible, and with zero air time for Edwards on MTP prior to Nevada, one wonders about NBC's lack of shame at this heavily-weighted emphasis on full-hour Republican interviews plus one for Hillary, prior to the first several primaries. One is appalled at the this and other networks' bald attempts to play 'king/queen-maker' before the super Tuesday primaries.

[DHeil]

Anyone else notice how HRC has a difficult time making eye contact when she talks? She spends more time looking down and to the side when she speaks. Communications experts will tell you that is because the speaker is reading a mental script, something they've likely practiced, rather than any spontaneous, "in the moment" conversation.

Is HRC heavily scripted? Is she rehearsed to a fault? Yes. Is she genuine in those moments? Hell no.

[OhPlease2007]

Rachel, you were GREAT on tonight's episode of Dan Abrams. I love the show, and I respect their individual opinions, but I thought these MSNBC commentators acted like a bunch of total M$M BOOBS. I sure hope you blog about the insanity of THAT episode! Unreal.

[tennisbv]

FYI: "Fox News Sunday" IS in fact broadcast on the Fox network. FNS rebroadcasts on Fox News Channel, but the original broadcast does air on the Fox broadcast network, not FNC.