Viewers vote for PBS, cable news

As broadcasters sharply limited their coverage of the Democratic National Convention this year, cable news networks and PBS leaped into the breach and came away with some impressive ratings.

Overall viewership for the convention -- including ABC, CBS and NBC plus the three all-news cable networks -- was down slightly compared with 2000, according to figures from Nielsen Media Research. This year’s coverage averaged 20.4 million total viewers over four nights, off 1% from four years ago.

During Sen. John F. Kerry’s speech Thursday, CBS fared best, attracting 5.5 million viewers, which helped elevate that network’s four-day convention average to 4.2 million viewers. That was down 2% from 2000.

NBC and ABC did not sell commercial time during Thursday’s coverage, and thus Nielsen did not report their numbers. However, ABC said that it averaged 4.8 million viewers when presidential nominee Kerry spoke. That was higher than the audience for the convention’s lead-in, “Extreme Makeover” (4.6 million).

Meanwhile, PBS and the cable networks appeared to reap the benefits from the broadcasters’ decision to limit prime-time coverage to just three hours per network this week.

PBS, the only broadcast network to provide full prime-time coverage of the convention, pulled in an estimated average of 3.3 million viewers Thursday, a 35% increase over the last night of the 2000 Democratic convention. It averaged 2.9 million viewers during the convention.

On cable, CNN topped its competitors, Fox News Channel and MSNBC. CNN attracted 2.9 million viewers during Kerry’s speech, trailed by Fox News Channel (1.7 million) and MSNBC (1.4 million viewers).

In addition, CNN said it averaged 2.3 million viewers for the week, as opposed to Fox News Channel’s 2 million and MSNBC’s 1.3 million. It was an unusual position for CNN, which since early 2002 has mostly played second fiddle to Fox News Channel in the ratings.

“They were playing to their core audience,” said Fox News spokesman Robert Zimmerman, citing recent research.

CNN was also up 42% over DNC coverage four years ago, as opposed to Fox’s increase of 398% and MSNBC’s 20%.