Fox News says nearly one-quarter of the 37-million viewers for Palin speech watched it on their channel

  The TV viewership numbers for Sarah Palin's speech at Wednesday's GOP convention were already impressive -- 37-million people tuned in for at least some of the speech, just 1-million shy of the record set by Barack Obama the week before.

But Fox News now says nearly one-quarter of those viewers saw the speech on their news channel, scoring viewership for the 10 p.m. hour ahead of networks NBC, CBS and ABC. Also, buried in the data, CNN scored viewership ahead of two networks -- ABC and CBS.

Fox also says it's the highest-rated convention telecast in cable news history; at Fox, only George Bush's address on the eve of the Iraq invasion and a Bush/Kerry debate in 2004 scored better ratings.

Here are the numbers, according to the good people at Fox News:

10-11:15 p.m. -– total viewers:

Fox News – 9.2 million

NBC – 7.7 million

CNN – 6.2 million

ABC – 5.9 million

CBS – 4.6 million

MSNBC – 3.4 million

*PBS - 3.2 million

(* Viewership figure provided by PBS)

*

Comments

[beltwaybandit]

The numbers noted above can be verified by going to www.tvbythenumbers.com and searching for the cable news ratings on 9/3/08 in the 10PM hour.

The reason PBS figures are not included is because they are non-commercial and thus, not relevent to the battle of ratings.

Of note...Fox turned in more than 9 million viewers on cable...a great number.

But...if you combine NBC News outlets on broadcast and cable, more than 11 million viewed their coverage.

The news battle has become a two horse race between NBC and Fox.

Is it coincidental that NBC has moved to a liberal slant and Fox has carried the conservative slant?

At the least, it says little about the country's interest in truly non-partisan news coverage.

[Doug]

Any numbers for C-SPAN? I turned over to C-SPAN about two days into the Democratic convention (and stayed there for the RNC) to get away from all the talking heads.

[Eric Deggans]

I don't know why Fox didn't list PBS' viewership, but according to PBS, 3.2-million people watched Palin speak there, which was lower than any of the other outlets listed....

[Lin Young]

Hmmm, I notice that FOX doesn't give figures for those of us watching on PBS. I guess PBS and its viewers are viewed as being ridiculous by the right-leaning FOX news. Kind of like how the conservative right views working for low pay as a community organizer. Or, as I did in Chicago, working for even lower pay to raise money to fund the low salaries of those community organizers.

[Gretchen]

I watched Palin's speech & I do think she delivered it well. But she's just a puppet who can read the telepompter WAAAY better than McCain can.

[Khan of the Wastelands]

Are those numbers for Fox News actually for Fox NEWS or are they for Fox Affiliates?