The numbers are in, and CNN’s election coverage broke records across every platform.
On-air, CNN beat every broadcast and cable network Tuesday night from 8-12:30 a.m. ET with an average of 13.3 million total viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.
ABC trailed with 12.5 million, NBC had 11.9 million, Fox News Channel posted 8.1 million, CBS averaged 7.5 million, MSBNC had 6.4 million, and FOX posted 4.7 million. In all, close to 80 million viewers tuned in to watch election night coverage.
I was surprised CNN did so well, and expected more out NBC, which I’m sure was hurting by not only the absense of Tim Russert but that stupid virtual reality center they used.
We were watching CNN here in Manhattan, and we had our windows open. The second that CNN announced Barack was president-elect, you could hear shouts of joy coming from the other buildings’ open windows, throughout the neighborhood. We’re on the 9th floor, so we could hear people in the streets below and in the apartments on many floors around us. It was totally awesome, and I remembered thinking, man, everyone must have had CNN on.
John King and his electoral map really makes the difference for me.
By running through the states and the hypotheticals he is always an hour or two of what’s happening. If electoral votes were allocated by the percentage of popular votes in each state the election would be exciting and representative of how the vote is going. But really the stations just watch a few heavily populated counties and then call all of the state and all of its electoral votes for a candidate.