The night’s most-anticipated show — the vice-presidential debate — scored huge ratings on Thursday night, with overnight Nielsen results showing that the contest between Republican nominee Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden could be one of the most-watched debates in history. ABC (just barely) snagged the most viewers (11.8 million), followed by NBC’s 11.6 million and CBS’ 11.4 million. Though totals have not yet been released, Nielsen reports that ratings in the country’s 55 biggest markets were 42 percent higher than they were for the presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama last Friday, which netted 10.2 million for ABC, 7.8 million for NBC, and 7.6 million for CBS. Those early numbers could change slightly when they’re finalized, but if they hold steady, they’d make it the highest-rated V.P. debate in history, passing 1984’s George Bush-Geraldine Ferraro showdown — viewers love a male-female matchup!
Ugly Betty and Survivor felt the standard post-premiere-week letdown in their second outings this fall. According to overnight ratings, Betty (8.6 million viewers) lost 1.3 million viewers since last week, though that’s not far off from its 8.7 million average last season. Survivor (12.9 million) dropped only 200,000 viewers compared with last week, but that’s almost 2 million below its average for last fall’s China-set season.
NBC’s double dose of My Name Is Earl actually ticked up slightly, from 6.4 million last week to this week’s 6.6 million at 8 p.m. and 7.4 million at 8:30 p.m. The CW’s Smallville (4 million) nearly matched its 4.2 million average from last year; Supernatural (3.6 million), meanwhile, kept with the net’s overall upswing this season, beating its 2007-08 average by 400,000.
Related EW content:
PopWatch: VP debates — Good TV?
PopWatch: Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on SNL season premiere
Comments (1-9) of 9 Add your comment
FIRST!
I noticed that the ratings from FOX are missing from the article. NO bias here.
I wish we knew PBS ratings. I was switching between that and CNN cause the voter themometer thing CNN had was messing with my opinion of the debate.
For all of you who think that Biden “won” the debate because he didn’t skirt the issues like Palin: Do some fact checking. He might have seemed like he knew what he was talking about but in truth, he is just a seasoned politician who tells peeople what they want to hear. Check the fact checker on CNN to see what lies he spouted about McCains tax increases. Yes, I said CNN- your very own liberal channel:
In Thursday night’s debate, Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, was even more off the mark, saying that under McCain’s tax proposal, “100 million families, middle-class families, households to be precise, they got not a single change, they got not a single break in taxes.” One hundred million “families” or “households” would include the vast majority of the U.S. population.
Verdict:
False. The Obama campaign bases its assertion on just one part of McCain’s economic plan, while ignoring the tax consequences of the rest of the McCain plan.
hey truth hurts please shut up, loser y are you even alive??
Dear truth.hurts.is dumb,
you shut up. Why are you alive ?
you forget we live in a free country, free to express what we believe…for now anyway!
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