His acceptance speech attracted more viewers than ever

It seems that everything that Barack Obama does these days makes history. Turns out that when Obama, the first Black major-party nominee, gave his acceptance speech last Thursday before the largest live convention audience ever – 84,000 people – there were more than 40 million people tuning in, making it the most popular TV event in political convention history. As Nielsen Media Research put it, “More people watched Obama speak from a packed stadium in Denver on Thursday than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing , the final ‘American Idol’ or the Academy Awards this year said Friday. (Four playoff football games, including the Super Bowl between the Giants and Patriots, were seen by more than 40 million people.)” Nielsen data showed that together CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, Univision, Telemundo, BET and TV One accounted for a 24.5 national household rating in the 10 p.m. hour. That translates into about 38.4 million people who watched Obama address the Democratic National Convention at Denver ’s Invesco Field. That doesn’t even include those who tuned in from C-SPAN or PBS, according to Nielsen. About 7.5 million of the viewers in the 10 p.m. hour were Blacks, Nielsen estimated. In Obama’s speech was the fifth-highest-rated, non-sports event watched by Blacks in more than a decade. Michael Jackson’s 2001 30th anniversary CBS special is No. 1. No other convention in history even comes close. The next largest TV audience was when 27.6 million watched Bush deliver his acceptance speech after defeating John Kerry four years ago.