Obama's Nielsen State Of The Union: 48 Million Viewers

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Obama's Nielsen State Of The Union: 48 Million Viewers
Jan. 27 Speech Outperform's Clinton's Initial SOTU, Trails W's
Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 1/28/2010 5:41:21 PM

President Barack Obama's first official State of the Union address was watched by an average of more than 48 million viewers on 11 networks, according to Nielsen data.

Obama's speech, which lasted more than an hour, represented a 5% gain over the 45.8 million watchers who tuned in Bill Clinton's first SOTU on Jan. 25, 1994, which aired on four networks.

Conversely, the Jan. 27 telecast trailed President George W. Bush's initital address on Jan. 29, 2002, which ran on eight networks by 7%, as that speech averaged 51.7 million.

ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Telemundo, Univision, CNN, BET, CNBC, Fox News Channel and MSNBC covered Obama's SOTU Wednesday night, according to Nielsen.