Democratic National Convention Viewership Down 27 Percent Compared To 2016

The Democratic National Convention is happening this week but there is not much excitement about it.

In fact, the ratings are down compared to 2016.

Granted, it’s harder to get people fired up when you’re doing a virtual event, but you would think they could at least match the energy of their last convention.

Variety reports:

Democratic National Convention Kicks Off Down 27% on 2016

The first night of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), which saw Michelle Obama deliver a rousing speech to steal the show, drew a total of around 18.7 million viewers across all the cable and broadcast networks. That represents roughly a 27% dip from day one of the 2016 convention, which totaled 25.7 million pairs of eyeballs.

While that total number is likely to grow once every network that Nielsen includes in its final count is added in, the chances it surpasses the tally from last convention, or even the 26.2 million and 22.3 million who tune in to the previous two before that, are pretty slim.

MSNBC scored the largest audience on the night in the 10 p.m. to 11:15 p.m. window with 5.1 million viewers (which is actually an increase from the 4.6 million it drew in the same time period four years ago), followed closely by CNN with just under 4.8 million viewers (down over a million on 2016). Fox News’ coverage of proceedings drew 2.1 million viewers, which represents a 1.2 million viewer drop from the previous convention.

Some people are blaming the format, even calling it boring.

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Business Insider reported:

The first night started as a flop

DNC producers’ jobs right now are unenviable for a host of reasons, not least of which is there’s no precedent for putting on a four-night semi-live television event that’s supposed to be both politically partisan and universally unifying.

Trumpists will look for any excuse to call Democrats anti-American, so the DNC gave us a large and diverse choir of Zoom-boxed heads kicking off the show with the “Star Spangled Banner.” I get that, Democrats, you had to prove you love America and couldn’t be seen as “canceling” John Philip Sousa. But were the rest of the first hour’s barrage of videos and musical guests necessary?…

But we got way too many Zoom-box montages, scored mostly by Bruce Springsteen’s post-9/11 anthem “The Rising.” The effect felt nightmarishly similar to the odious “Fight Song” — which was played ad nauseam for four days at the 2016 DNC.

This is not encouraging news for Democrats. The ratings and the response should make them very nervous.

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