Night 1 of Democratic Convention Completely Bombs in Network TV Ratings
This doesn’t bode well for Biden and company.
Less than 80 days before an election that has dominated news cycles since President Donald Trump took the oath of office back in 2017, Night 1 of the Democratic National Convention on Monday turned in abysmal ratings on the major broadcast networks.
And compared to the Hillary Clinton coronation of four years ago, it wasn’t even close.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, overall viewership for ABC, CBS and NBC during the hour-plus of the convention that the broadcast networks aired came in at a total of about 6.7 million — 42 percent less than the convention’s opening night in 2016.
When cable news networks are included, according to the Los Angeles Times, total viewership came to about 18.7 million, a decrease of 28 percent from the 2016 total.
Of the Big 3, ABC had the biggest audience with 2.44 million viewers, THR reported. NBC came in second with 2.28 million and CBS brought up the rear with 1.99.
On cable, the Los Angeles Times reported, MSNBC had 5.1 million viewers, CNN had 4.8 million, and Fox News had 2.1 million.
In 2016, cable and broadcast networks combined for 25.9 million viewers for the first night, the Times reported.
Obviously, 2020 presents some challenges that weren’t present for the past presidential conventions.
With the coronavirus keeping party members from gathering — and keeping the Democrats’ Joe Biden cowering in his basement — large numbers of Americans no doubt decided that there were better things to do than tune in to canned speeches and feigned enthusiasm.
As Variety reported — in what looked suspiciously like running cover for the Democrats — the low number “isn’t necessarily surprising given that much of this year’s convention is pre-taped and that television viewership as a whole has declined significantly in the last four years.”
That’s all true, of course. There’s no denying the pandemic, and television viewing habits are changing daily in the wired world,
But it’s also not exactly how Democrats are portraying themselves. A country that’s as disgusted by the Trump administration as Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media are pretending, should be at least as interested in his opposition gathering this year as it was in 2016.
That’s all the more so, considering the Democrats’ Night 1 boasted one of the party’s most prominent faces — former first lady Michelle Obama.
And it didn’t work.
As The Daily Beast media reporter Maxwell Tani put it:
“The only discernible theme of the night seemed to be appealing to disenchanted Republicans. Former California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, now CEO of short-form video content platform Quibi, made a pre-recorded appearance. As did former Republican politicians like former Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Rep. Susan Molinari. Each disgruntled conservative hammered away at Trump’s temperament and his handling of the pandemic.”
Well, as Trump’s support in unopposed primaries has shown, outside of Beltway-types like William Kristol and George Will, there really aren’t that many “disenchanted Republicans” — the traitorous John Kasich notwithstanding.
If Americans were really swallowing the anti-Trump propaganda swill the mainstream media is pouring, they’d have been mesmerized by the prospect of seeing their saviors on their television screens in an event hosted by actress and abortion rights activist Eva Longoria.
Clearly, they’re not — not even when the duplicitous Michelle Obama is being offered as a draw.
And social media noticed:
Looks like the American people weren’t that interested in day 1 of the DNC Convention… https://t.co/chG0fryL8H
— Tom Wiseman ?? (@SinCityTomW) August 18, 2020
It sounds like even the democrats didn’t like the DNC.@realDonaldTrump #TRUMP2020ToSaveAmerica #idleg #MAGA2020
— Nichols For Idaho (@nicholsforidaho) August 18, 2020
Ratings for #DemocraticNationalConvention were down more than 50% for ABC, NBC & CBS combined, compared to 2016, “not surprising given that much of the convention isn’t live & the general decline of linear TV viewing in the past 4 yrs.” Sure, that’s it. https://t.co/Jug8fYVFgJ pic.twitter.com/ilflXMSiO9
— ⚡️WonderWoman2KAG⚡️ (@WonderWoman2KAG) August 18, 2020
Former Trump White House press secretary Sean Spicer put it perfectly in a Twitter post published late Monday, long before the ratings disaster would become known.
I can’t wait for night 2 said no one
— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) August 18, 2020
Naturally, the convention is yet young (unlike its eventual nominee).
And it’s entirely possible that by the fourth night, its viewership will skyrocket.
But the reality is this: Democrats are staging a convention few are interested in to boost a candidate whose primary campaign had to be rescued by the party establishment from democratic socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
They could have skipped the whole convention and hardly a soul outside the immediate worlds of politics and the television industry would have cared.
The sole raison d’etre for the Democratic Party in 2020 is to defeat Donald Trump and use the obviously failing Joe Biden as its figurehead to do it.
That might be fine for the Democratic Party, but it’s not fine for the American people — and from the looks of Monday’s ratings, the American people know it.
It doesn’t bode well at all for Biden — or his party.
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