Barack Obama’s State of the Union: Nearly 43 million watched
President Barack Obama shakes the hands of congressional pages after Tuesday's State of the Union address. Photo credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
President Barack Obama was the winner of Tuesday’s ratings race.
His State of the Union address drew 42.78 million viewers across 11 channels.
Last year, Obama attracted 48 million viewers to the State of the Union address. Obama’s address to Congress in February two years ago averaged 52.37 million viewers. President George W. Bush’s State of the Union in 2008 was seen by 37.51 million.
Obama had 9.28 million viewers on NBC.
He had many viewers on the cable news channels: Fox News Channel with 4.96 million, CNN with 2.98 million and MSNBC with 2.5 million. Fox had the edge with the 25-to-54 age group, which is most important to advertisers: Fox News with 1.63 million, CNN with 1.2 million and MSNBC with 836,000.
There are several interesting wrinkles in the post-speech analysis. Fox News had more viewers for the analysis — 5.44 million — than the actual speech. So did CNN, with 3 million viewers. MSNBC pulled in 2.35 million viewers.
In the broadcast world, Tuesday’s ratings did not include the speech. CBS averaged 10.88 million viewers. Here’s how the other networks fared: NBC with 7.69 million and Fox with 4.75 million for “Glee” and Disney-owned ABC with 4.08 million. The CW averaged 2 million viewers with new episodes of “One Tree Hill” (1.89 million) and “Hellcats” (2.15 million).
The biggest entertainment show was CBS’ “NCIS” with 13.4 million. NBC’s “Biggest Loser” drew 8.58 million viewers and put the Peacock Network on the top in 18-to-49 age viewers.
In Orlando, the top programs were “NCIS” with 159,400 viewers and “The Biggest Loser” with 127,600. Both started about 15 minutes late because of weather coverage.