TV Ratings: Trump's First SOTU Dips From 2017 Speech in Early Numbers

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January 31, 2018 6:31am PT by Michael O'Connell

TV Ratings: Trump's First SOTU Dips From 2017 Speech in Early Numbers

Donald Trump gave his first State of the Union on Tuesday night, his second formal address since taking office, and the presidential spiel naturally dominated evening ratings — though it seems to be off some from his first go in the House chamber in 2017.

Early returns, based on Nielsen's 56 metered markets, have the hour-plus speech pulling a combined 14.8 overnight rating among households on the broadcast networks. That's between 9 and 10:30 p.m., and only counts for four of the seven major networks bng the speech. Compared to the same stats for the same networks a year ago, that's off roughly 9 percent from his 2017 speech. (Trump's 2017 address pulled a combined 16 overnight rating among metered market households, ultimately earning 48 million viewers with all networks tallied.)

Trump's speech ran longer than usual for a SOTU, an hour and twenty minutes. And, going off of these very early numbers, his speech will likely fall shy of both his performance in 2017 and Barack Obama's first SOTU in office in 2010.

For a presidency, addresses tend to start high (of late, with an unofficial speech weeks into office) and steadily lose steam — with obvious exceptions in times of war or uncertainty. Obama kicked off the first of his eight addresses in the House chamber with 52.4 million viewers in 2009. That was followed by modest drop, in 2010, to 48 million viewers. Over the course of the Obama presidency, tune-in gradually declined roughly 20 million viewers to a low for his last address: 31.3 million in 2016.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-trumps-first-sotu-dips-2017-speech-early-numbers-1080436

Tweet storm about "fake news" in 5...4...3...2...1

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1. CNN Instant poll: Trump gets least positive reaction in at least 20 years

CNN Instant poll: Trump gets least positive reaction in at least 20 years

CNN Instant poll: Trump gets least positive reaction in at least 20 years
Ryan Struyk

By Ryan Struyk, CNN

Updated 1:00 AM ET, Wed January 31, 2018
CNN poll: 48% reacted positively to SOTU speech

Washington (CNN) Almost half of Americans who watched President Donald Trump's first State of the Union address -- 48% -- say they had a "very positive" impression of the speech, down from 57% of speech-watchers after his first address to match Barack Obama's rating after his first State of the Union address, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.

It's the lowest net positive rating for a State of the Union address since at least 1998, when CNN first asked the question. There is no equivalent poll for addresses before 1998.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/31/politics/state-of-the-union-reaction-poll/index.html

As a caveat to the above - the assumption was that the avid watchers of this were obvious fans of Drumpf. I know many non-Drumpf supporters (including many on DU) chose NOT to watch. Meaning - his "base" is dropping.

But to clarify the funky pretzel-twisting commentary that CNN has with this -

Only 48% of viewers had a very positive view of Obama's first State of the Union address, though a larger portion had a somewhat positive reaction, giving him a net positive score of 78% in 2010. He also did better during his first address to Congress, just after being inaugurated in 2009. Then, 68% said they had a very positive view of his address.

Obama's FIRST "official" SOTU (which was in 2010) netted him 78% positive (total) vs Drumpf's "official" SOTU (last night), which netted him less - 70% positive (total).