According to Nielsen Media Research, Sen. John McCain’s acceptance speech drew the largest commercial TV audience in the history of televised political conventions.

Recent numbers:

John McCain	38.9 million viewers
Barack Hussein Obama	38.3 million viewers
Sarah Palin	37.2 million viewers
Average for GOP 3 days coverage	34.4 million viewers
Average for Dem 4 days coverage	30.2 million viewers
Joseph Biden	24.0 million viewers

That’s right, while Sarah and John brought the average viewership for the GOP convention up, Joe Biden actually depressed the viewership average for the Democrats. Rethinking that VP choice there, Obama?

Reuters notes:

By comparison, 34.9 million U.S. television viewers watched the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics in August and talent show "American Idol", the most watched TV show in the nation, averaged 28.1 million viewers last season.

Maybe Joe would have done better if he had tried singing his speech.

Interestingly, Obama’s historic acceptance speech was only the "fifth most-viewed, non-sports program among African American households in the last 11 years." What do African-Americans think is more important?

1. Michael Jackson 30th Anniversary (2001)
2. NBC Movie of the Week: The Temptations Part 2 (1998)
3. Primetime Special Edition: Whitney Houston (2002)
4. Oprah Winfrey Presents: The Wedding Part 2 (1998)

And there you go, a nice snapshot of the American voting citizenry.

[Note: Nielsen, of course, fails to include non-commercial channels like PBS and CSPAN.]