Barack is now the nominee, Hillary is on board, Bill is kicking into gear and Joe is taking names. The Democrats' convention is eventful, but who is watching it all go down?
Over twenty million people a night -- and the numbers are rising. In fact, on the second night of the convention, the Dems quintupled their draw compared to 2004. Five times the voters ain't bad.
This Tuesday drew 26 million viewers, while only about five million people tuned in on the same day in 2004. That's partly because no networks covered Kerry's second day in Boston. This year, in contrast, there is huge interest in the entire convention, and especially in Sen. Clinton's address on Day Two.
Ari Melber
Barack is now the nominee, Hillary is on board, Bill is kicking into gear and Joe is taking names. The Democrats’ convention is eventful, but who is watching it all go down?
Over twenty million people a night — and the numbers are rising. In fact, on the second night of the convention, the Dems quintupled their draw compared to 2004. Five times the voters ain’t bad.
This Tuesday drew 26 million viewers, while only about five million people tuned in on the same day in 2004. That’s partly because no networks covered Kerry’s second day in Boston. This year, in contrast, there is huge interest in the entire convention, and especially in Sen. Clinton’s address on Day Two.
About nine percent of the U.S. population is checking into convention coverage, according to Nielsen. The share is higher among African Americans — about 12.7 percent are tuning in to see the first nomination of a black candidate by a major party in American history. Divided by age, the audience for this convention skews towards older Americans. One out of five Americans over age 55 caught some convention programming. (I asked Nielsen if there is any spike in youth interest compared to 2004, but a spokesman said the 2004 age demographics are not available.)
Sitting here in the hall press box, it’s hard to have any feel for how most Americans are experiencing the convention. The politicians and pundits are all around, but they’re hard to hear. Sen. Evan Bayh, the only neoconservative to make Obama’s VP shortlist, is talking now, but the din of the crowd is drowning out his address. Out of the several dozen reporters near The Nation aisle, few look like they’re listening. My colleagues Patricia Williams and Ari Berman are both reading, some grizzled newspaper reporters hit the phones, and a long line snakes behind the section for reporters waiting for floor credentials to get close to Biden’s speech.
As Tom Daschle serves up a stern lecture, the delegates are buzzing with preparation for the bigger speeches of the night. Obama operatives clad in bright green vests run from the boiler room with signs, flags and other Americana for delegates to wave during the next speeches. Daschle’s address is about as staid as his striped gray tie, but people seem excited anyway.
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.