Obama Inauguration Ratings: Highest Since Reagan

NEW YORK — Nearly 38 million Americans watched inauguration coverage of President Barack Obama on Tuesday, the most popular inauguration day on television since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.

Nielsen Media Research said Reagan's 41.8 million remains the record. Obama more than doubled the 15.5 million viewers who watched George Bush's second inauguration four years ago.

The ratings figure was an average number of people watching at any point from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST. Viewership spiked during the noon hour when Obama was taking the oath of office and delivering his inaugural address.

During the 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. period, NBC captured the largest audience _ an estimated 10.4 million viewers, Nielsen said. ABC had 10.1 million and CBS had 7 million. CNN, with 6.9 million, narrowly missed beating CBS during those three hours but did during the 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. period. Fox News Channel had 4.4 million and MSNBC 2.6 million viewers between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., Nielsen said.

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On the Net:

http://www.nielsenmedia.com

Comments

[LeftHandedMama]

Adjusted for population growth, Reagan had almost twice the viewership as Obama LOL

Reagan STILL rules!

[binq56]

We all know that this was more watched than Reagan. Of course, the internet and all the cable channels were not around when he was sworn in. It wasn't the must see like the Obama inauguration. Just another poll that means nothing. The WORLD watched.

[LeftHandedMama]

Sadly, no. The world was watching with Reagan too - hostages in Iraq, the Cold War, hello? Reagan with his finger on the button? Hostages released after a year and a half immediately after the inauguration? Have you even read the accounts of the hostages when their captors told them who'd won the election? It was explosive.

Every generation thinks they're new snowflakes and nothing's been done before. It has. People have been thrilled before. Honest.

[GeoLee]

What an under count. I imagine many of the large screen televisions in churches, schools, city streets, civic centers, shopping malls apartment clubhouses, eating establishments and other such places all over the country very much were tuned to one of those networks which only counts the number of sets tuned on...not the number of people watching each set. Just viewing the photos on the Reuters and NYT slides yesterday verified that at several sites including Times Square, Harlem's Apollo theatre and various parks around the city showed thousands of viewers. That happened all over the United States. And, it for darned sure did not happen anywhere near that extent at Reagan's inauguration. In my 63 years I have never seen so many large groups gathering to watch an inauguration all over this country before. I would estimate more like 100 million television watchers and many millions on their computers, I have talked to very few people who did not find a way to look in at 11 our time.

[lovenews]

I like Maddow and Olberman. I would have watched MSNBC but I could not find a Hi def MSNBC station.

[Natalee]

Well, I watched ABC.com and BBC World. None of which is mentioned in the Nielsen survey. I suspect I was not alone.

[obamasandiego]

There are 14 of us in the office who couldn't get the day off, thus watched the inauguration over the internet. Where are the internet numbers???

[Figerre]

Is anyone going to add the Neilson numbers to the 31.7 million that watched online? plus overseas? I would say we shot Reagan's numbers over the moon.

[thos]

Don't forget that in 1980 U.S. population was about 225 Million. That's about 80 Million less than today.

[LeftHandedMama]

Yes; by the numbers above, that makes Reagan's percentage almost twice as high as Obama's. Which, considering that we now have zomg giant TVs on every corner and internetz and zillions of channels, is pathetic.

[LeftHandedMama]

Not even close. The world was watching in '81 too. It wasn't the height of the cold war (and Reagan with his finger on the button) for nothing.

[Christopher Corbett]

Hey Geniuses!

How many Internet Viewers did Reagan have? I'm guessing zero. Obama had 21 million!

BAM!!!! Suck on that neocons!

Oh, and 2 million turned out for Obama in 20 degree weather compared to 500,000 for Reagan in 55 degree weather.

Conservatism is dead.

[NWRICK]

Good point.
Do you know what day of the week Jan 20, 1981 was?

[CindyKay]

It was a Tuesday

[thos]

You are kidding, right?

[lvdragonlady]

Nice to see Fox and Msnbc at the bottom of the list.
With any luck they will fade to black in the near future.

[brad33le]

bwahahahahahaha this "historic" president can't even muster the following that some old actor from california could 30 years ago?? bwahahahaha looks like the whole obama-mania just another fabrication of the news media so they can try and drive up their own ratings. but cmon, this guy is supposed to be "historic" and all that right? yet he can't even pull off higher ratings than reagan 30 years ago, kinda sad actually

[NWRICK]

See post above from Chis, genius.

[hapaglloyd]

Cnn.com had over 13 million watching. Plus millions more on C-span . Plus BET and others,add those up and its almpst 60 million.

[maikonen]

I watched it on the internet as did millions. The internet wasn't around during Reagan's inauguration, you cretin, and half the world didn't pause to watch him take his oath. You need to get over it; the event was of mounmental significance.

[LeftHandedMama]

So...the fact that people didn't have ACCESS to ready media like today is a "gotcha"? Does that really make sense to you? Also, the world most certainly DID watch. The Iraqi captors announced it to their hostages with glee - and when one of the men said, "Wait a minute, REAGAN won?" and the captor happily told him yes, all the hostages broke into whoops and shouts. The thug was puzzled, and the marine made the universal symbol of a nuke falling - the whistle, the hand motions of a mushroom cloud, and several of them said, "Ooooooh!" The hostages were released immediately following the inauguration. The Russians had a hell of an interest too - Cold War anyone?

Listen, celebrating is one thing, but don't make yourself sound utterly ignorant of history, would you?

[GeoLee]

I can guarantee you there were no crowds of thousands gathered all over the country watching in venues with one big screen television in 1980 and there were no 30 or more million watching on their office computers. Nice try, repug, but your hero did not score a big hit by comparison.

[bayman]

Just as with the debates/co­nventions, MSNBC's ratings will continue to lag for events like this until they upgrade to HD. I'm aware of many regular MSNBC viewers (like myself) who switch to CNN to get the sharper video presentation.

[hapaglloyd]

They did not count C-SPAN ,plus million watched it on the internent.

[LogicNow]

This does not count for the MILLIONS of people who gathered at Inauguration watch parties around the world. Just like the convention numbers were off (many watch parties for that too!!!)

[JoeHurley]

This would make perfect sense. Of course Obama had the most people watching his inauguration since Reagan. In the last four decades, Obama and Reagan were, by far, the most popular incoming presidents. They both walked in to the White House with the majority of Americans truly exited about their presidencies.

[CindyKay]

I was not at all Excited about Reagan.

[-0013]

Wonderful?

[JoeHurley]

I know. I'm not all that excited about Obama. That doesn't mean that I can't see the obvious, most people are.

[KansasWrangler]

In this new information age, Nielsen is irrelevant for making determinations on number of viewers. They are only useful to the TV advertisers. Millions of people watched the inauguration on cell phones and on the internet. Ronald Reagan was the LAST of the TV inaugurals, and I recall not watching the inauguration at all but tuning in because of the release of hostages from Iran. Per the LA Times, "Nielsen's Tuesday measurement counted the audience for 17 broadcast and cable networks. The figure represents live viewing as well as programming recorded on DVRs and played back later in the day. However, it doesn't include viewers in offices, schools and other "out-of-home" locations, nor does it measure the number who watched streaming video online." This was not an issue during the Reagan inaugural. U.S. viewership was probably 2 - 3 time that of Reagan's. International viewership was probably 100 times that.

[rock2casbah]

I was wondering why they were going o and on about Reagan, since this is an entirely different era of viewing. What about the live stream from computers? That is not even mentioned. The we had maybe 20 stations with Reagan, pretty easy to get all the vierwers when that's the case.

[-0013]

Hopefully, Obama can be 1/2 the president Reagan was.

[GeoLee]

Well, he met that level on day 2.