Maybe it was curiosity about the untested candidate who took command of the ticket at the last minute, or the cameos by TV-ready celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling and Kerry Washington. The runaway (and ultimately misguided) speculation that Beyoncé might make an appearance certainly did not hurt.
Whatever the reason, Democrats notched a victory this week in one of the year’s biggest media bouts: Which party’s political convention would attract more viewers?
The four-day celebration in Chicago of Vice President Kamala Harris was watched on TV by an average of 21.8 million viewers across four nights, Nielsen said on Friday. That was 14 percent more than the Republicans’ jamboree last month in Milwaukee, a four-day tribute to former President Donald J. Trump.
The gap between the conventions, however, narrowed on the final day, when the presidential nominees delivered their climactic remarks. On Thursday, the night of Ms. Harris’s acceptance speech, 26.2 million people tuned in. On the evening in July when Mr. Trump spoke, in his first extensive address since surviving an assassination attempt, 25.4 million watched — a difference of only 3 percent.
On its own, Ms. Harris’s 40-minute speech averaged 28.9 million TV viewers, according to Nielsen. The audience for Mr. Trump’s 92-minute address last month fell short of that figure, peaking early at 28.4 million viewers and then dwindling as the former president spoke long into the night.
Live TV ratings are a useful metric of the nation’s attention economy, but they are not all-encompassing. The Nielsen data did not capture viewers who streamed the conventions on their phones or laptops. Democrats, in particular, encouraged podcasters and social media influencers to post short videos from Chicago in the hopes of reaching voters who do not watch traditional TV.
This year’s convention ratings also underscored the continuing flight toward partisanship in television news.
Just as Fox News crushed its network rivals in the ratings race during the Republican convention — beating MSNBC and CNN combined — the Democratic convention had one clear winner: MSNBC. The cable home of Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid, which has a fervent liberal fan base, beat every network (including ABC, CBS, and NBC) in total convention viewership.
This year marked MSNBC’s largest audience for a Democratic convention since the network’s founding in 1996, a milestone achieved despite the cord-cutting that has drastically reduced the number of people who subscribe to cable in the first place.
CNN has endured a tough stretch in the ratings, but its Democratic convention coverage attracted more viewers in the most coveted demographic — adults 25 to 54 years old — than any other network. (MSNBC fell just short, losing to CNN in the category by a margin of roughly 1 percent.)
CNN’s new leadership is trying to appeal to more casual, and less partisan, consumers of news. It has already played a central role in this year’s campaign: It was CNN’s presidential debate in June that set off the head-spinning series of events that led to Ms. Harris’s prime-time speech on Thursday.
