The Democratic National Convention (DNC) struggled badly with ratings last week, performing poorly via online streaming and dropping 25% i...
The Democratic National Convention (DNC) struggled badly with ratings last week, performing poorly via online streaming and dropping 25% in broadcast viewership on the first night, and hitting a massive 48% decline by the second night of the convention.
Due to the same coronavirus-related issues facing the GOP, the Republican National Convention (RNC) was predicted to similarly flail.
But this appears to not be the case, at least digitally.
On Monday, the first night of the convention, C-SPAN livestream viewership was six times higher than the first night of the Democrat’s convention.
According to The Hill, C-SPAN’s livestream of the RNC garnered nearly 440,000 views. The first night of the DNC, by comparison, gathered a mere 76,000 views.
As noted by the outlet, the livestream numbers are preceded by traditional broadcast ratings from Nielsen Media Research, not set to be released until later in the day on Tuesday.
According to the media company, The Hill noted, “18.7 million people tuned in to the first night of the virtual Democratic convention from Milwaukee and Wilmington, Del. last Monday night, which featured speeches from former first lady Michelle Obama and former Gov. John Kasich” and Democratic nominee Joe Biden mustered some 21.8 million viewers via broadcast.
The Biden numbers were 21% lower than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 DNC acceptance speech, the report added. “They are also more than 38 percent lower than President Trump‘s acceptance speech at the Republican convention four years ago, which drew 34.9 million viewers.”
Speaking specifically to digital metrics, The Post Millennial’s Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Ballingall said last week that the speech from former first lady Michelle Obama, which was widely praised by the mainstream media, preformed poorly, buried in online views by an ad from relatively unknown GOP congressional candidate Kimberly Klacik.
“By digital metrics, Michelle Obama bombed at the DNC last night. The former first lady was completely outdone by an unknown house candidate, [Kim Klacik],” Ballingall argued, citing Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube views and engagement.
The CMO highlighted last Wednesday that DNC online views again performed poorly, despite former President Barack Obama as the headlining address.
Additionally, Medium Buying reported that “final viewership estimate from [Nielsen Media Research] for Night 2 of the 2020 #DemConvention” was at 19.22 million viewers across 10 different networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, CNNe, Fox Business, FOXNC, MSNBC, and Newsy. Author and pundit Ryan Girdusky commented, “Night 2 of the #DemConvention had 5 million fewer viewers than 4 years ago…. and even if they had the same number of people streaming that the Super Bowl had, it wouldn’t make up the loss.”
The first night of the RNC included speakers like Donald Trump Jr., GOP congressional candidate Kimberly Klacik, Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, and father and school safety advocate Andrew Pollack.
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