The Nielsen ratings are in and if you didn't bother to watch the President's Tuesday night State of the Union address, you weren't alone. Only 33 million people put themselves through the President's ugly endurance test - across 14 networks. That's the lowest viewership in 13 years.
From the LA Times:
President Obama's 2014 State of the Union address drew an average of 33.3 million viewers Tuesday night, according to Nielsen.
That is the lowest showing since 2000, when President Clinton's speech averaged 31.5 million viewers.
Total viewership for the address, which aired live from 6 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. PST on 13 networks and tape delayed on Univision, was down slightly from last year's. The 2013 State of the Union was watched by about 33.5 million people.
Ouch. To put that in perspective, George W. Bush's lowest rated speech drew 37.5 million viewers in 2008. At the time, his approval ratings were in the dumper and he'd become one of the most reviled Presidents in modern American history - at least in the eyes of the media. By the way, the 31.5 million that watched Clinton in 2000 had the distinction of being the smallest audience since Nielsen began keeping track all the way back in 1993.
The numbers shouldn't surprise anyone, since - from "closing Gitmo" to "broadband for everyone" - virtually everything in the speech was something people had heard before. Re-runs never do as well as their first run counterparts.
Going by the ratings, if Obama's presidency was an unfunny sitcom or hammy prime time soap, it would have been cancelled Wednesday morning.
