GOP Vice Presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin got big ratings for her peppery acceptance speech:
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin proved Wednesday night she could deliver a good speech – and a huge audience.
An estimated 37.24 million viewers tuned into six networks measured by the Nielsen Company to see the vice presidential nominee’s speech before the Republican National Convention.
The numbers were just short of the 38.37 million people who tuned in to see Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama address the Democratic National Convention last Thursday, which aired on 10 networks.
She also topped Obama’s vice presidential pick, Sen. Joe Biden, who drew just 24.02 million viewers, and Sen. Hillary Clinton, who averaged 25.9 million, in appearances at the DNC a week before, according to Nielsen.
Just as the ratings on Obama’s speech meant that viewers could watch him unfiltered without any left, right, center commentary and judge for themselves, Palin’s huge audience share means that viewers could make their own decision. Now the question becomes: as the days wear on (1) will the ticket’s numbers go up as it clearly unifies the party? (2) will they go up enough (since neither party is going to win unless they get a good chunk of the independent voters)? The voting jury is still out — but polls should start coming in soon. And, then, GOP nominee Sen. John McCain gives his big speech tonight.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.