70m watch Biden-Palin debate
04/10/2008 08:44  - (SA)  

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New York - Far more Americans watched Thursday's vice presidential debate between Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Sarah Palin on television than watched the first presidential debate.

More than 70 million people in the US tuned in. That would make it the second most-watched political debate ever, behind only the 80.6m people who watched President Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan in their only 1980 encounter, according to Nielsen Media Research.

When presidential candidates Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama met in their first debate on September 26, Nielsen recorded 52.4m viewers. They will have two more debates, the first of them next Tuesday.

Curiosity factor

Palin, the governor of Alaska, has been a television star since joining the Republican ticket a month ago. The curiosity factor undoubtedly brought in viewers this week after Palin raised doubts about her readiness for the job with some wobbly TV interviews.

Most analysts said she erased some of those doubts on Thursday but didn't necessarily win the debate or bring more voters into the McCain camp.

Timing may also have played a part in the big ratings. Thursday is one of the most popular nights of the week for TV-watching, while Friday, when McCain and Obama first debated, is one of the least popular.

Generally, only the Super Bowl NFL football championship brings together so many Americans to watch the same thing.

Nielsen estimated that 69.99m people watched Palin and Biden on either ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNBC, BBC America, Telemundo or TeleFutura. The figure does not include PBS or C-SPAN, which also showed the debate, but PBS estimated its audience at 3.5m.

The audience far exceeded any other vice presidential debate. The closest was in 1984, when Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman on a major-party ticket, and 56.7m people watched her and Vice President George Bush.

ABC claimed a pundit victory. Its audience for the half hour of post-debate analysis on Thursday was larger than that of NBC or CBS.

- AP

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