*About 48 million viewers tuned in for President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address on 11 networks, according to the Nielsen Co.
Fox TV, which moved “American Idol” to 8 p.m. as a lead-in, drew the biggest share of the audience for Wednesday’s speech.
The 48 million was 7 percent lower than for President George W. Bush’s first such address in 2002 but 5 percent higher than for President Bill Clinton’s inaugural State of the Union speech in 1994.
From 9-10 p.m. EST, more than 9.7 million people watched the hour-plus speech on Fox, with ABC drawing 7.6 million viewers, NBC 7.2 million and CBS 6.2 million, according to preliminary Nielsen figures Thursday.
Among the cable news networks, Fox News was the leader with 5.7 million, followed by CNN with 3.3 million and MSNBC with 2.4 million. The speech also was carried live on Telemundo, Univision, BET and CNBC.
That just means 48 million americans shouldn’t have anything to complain about because Obama touched every area of concern. Some of us might not have liked it but it is what it is. Throughout he reiterated bi partisan and when I heard a pundit yesterday call him a hypocrite for saying he wanted input on health care from Republicans but was one of the ones in the closed door meetings about health care with the Democrats I thought surely he’s jesting. Republicans are seeing what they want to see and hearing what they want to hear because they don’t want bi partisan input or action, they want to be lead dog and that’s it. There is just no way for me to believe that a measure that costs us so much and is mired in so much controversy was missed by the rethugs – unless that’s the way they wanted it.