Clinton Edges Out Bush in Race for TV Ratings

In the quest for television viewers, President Bush trailed Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. But like the latest preference polls, the race was close.

Television coverage of Thursday night’s session of the Republican National Convention, which featured Bush’s acceptance speech, drew more than 32.7 million viewers, according to figures released Friday by the A.C. Nielsen Co.

More than 33 million people tuned in when Clinton gave his acceptance speech at last month’s Democratic National Convention.

About 27.3 million people tuned to ABC, CBS or NBC to watch the Republican proceedings Thursday, with about 5.4 million households opting for CNN or PBS.

Nielsen figures were not available for three other TV outlets covering the convention: C-SPAN, cable’s non-commercial public affairs network; cable’s Comedy Central and the Spanish-language Univision network. Univision said that 2 million adults watched its coverage Thursday, citing figures from the Strategy Research Corp.

Clinton held at least one advantage over Bush in the quest for television viewers. His address came on a day when, in the view of most analysts, political interest was higher than usual because Texas businessman Ross Perot had announced earlier in the day that he would not be a presidential candidate.

As it did with the Democratic Convention, ABC won the overall ratings race for the four-day Republican event, averaging 8 million viewers per night. NBC was second with 7.89 million and CBS was third with 7 million.

Bush was in competition with himself for a brief period on the West Coast Thursday night as “The Simpsons,” on the Fox network, began with the animated family watching a video clip of the President at a Houston rally Monday.

“We are going to keep on trying to strengthen the American family . . . to make American families a lot more like ‘The Waltons’ (a close-knit TV family portrayed on a 1972-81 CBS series) and a lot less like ‘The Simpsons,’ ” Bush said.

On the show, Bart Simpson responded, “Hey, we’re just like the Waltons--we’re praying for the end of the Depression, too.”

Bart’s barb was seen in about 643,000 homes in the Los Angeles market on KTTV Channel 11, according to Nielsen figures, while a total of about 1 million homes were tuned to the speech on the three network-owned stations.