Minneapolis I‘m sitting in the Xcel Energy Center watching the birth of a convention hall–a cacophony of hammers, drills and “testing one, two, three” suggests the Republican Convention is just days away. The media presence in these halls is always impressive. Modern conventions are, after all, largely media events. AP, BBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, and Fox sky suites stand at various stages of completion–with technicians setting up cameras, cables, and video monitors. And right above the Thompson-Reuters and AP suites, the Al Jazeera Channel has a box too. It’s still dark–maybe they had a late night of pre-convention festivities? All this led me to wonder who is watching the festivities. Nielsen’s new website contains some interesting data on viewership. No results are available yet on last night, but a couple highlights from days 1 and 2:
Mark Blumenthal at Pollster.com highlights how African American watching of this week’s Democratic convention compares to the rest of the population:
According to historical data on the Nielsen site, over a million more households watched the Republican Convention than the Democratic Convention in 2004. Democrats drew more viewers, however, in 2000. Tonight’s Obama-Palooza at Invesco Field should smash all the old records–if for no other reason just to see if the Democratic nominee wears a toga to match the Greek columns. HT: Pollster.com
