John McCain attracted 38.9 million television viewers for his Republican Convention acceptance speech, breaking the previous record from Barack Obama which was 38.4 million viewers as well as being viewed by more than the GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin.
The television stations tracked for Barack Obama's speech were CBS, ABC, NBC and the Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo as well as the cable stations MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, Black Entertainment Television and TV One.
Black Entertainment Television and TV One did not air the McCain speech.
The last night of the Republican gathering in St. Paul, Minnesota, was seen in 28.3 million homes, breaking the record of the 27.7 million who tuned in for Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention. McCain's ratings are the highest for a political convention since Nielsen began collecting data in 1960.
Combined, McCain and Palin had 76.2 million viewers in comparison to Barack Obama and Joe Biden who had 62.4 million viewers.
The Republican nominee's audience last night also exceeded the average viewing audience for the Beijing Olympics, a separate Nielsen report showed. U.S. Olympics viewers averaged 27.7 million a night, making the games the most watched.
TV Week breaks the numbers down a bit for ABC, NBC and CBS.
.
