The final night of the 2012 Republican National Convention took a big hit with the Nielsens.
With 11 networks in the mix from 10 p.m. to 11:15 p.m. on Aug. 31, Nielsen tabulated the collective vote at almost 30.3 million viewers as Mitt Romney accepted the GOP presidential nomination. That was 22.1%, or 8.6 million, below the 38.9 million who watched John McCain accept the Republican nod in 2008.
As was the case throughout the Hurricane Isaac-shortened RNC in Tampa, Fox News Channel scored the most viewers. During its coverage in the 10 p.m. hour, FNC averaged 9.06 million viewers, according to Nielsen data. That was more than double ABC's 4.44 million. NBC was third with 3.85 million, CBS fourth with 3.73 million, CNN fifth with 2.33 million and MSNBC sixth with 1.88 million.
All six of those networks -- FNC (2%), ABC (26%), NBC (56%), CBS (30%) CNN (52%), MSNBC (25%) -- saw their audience average decline during the 10 p.m. hour compared with the final night of the 2008 RNC.
The pecking order was slightly different on Thursday night among the news demo of adults 25 to 54. FNC (2.58 million) and ABC (1.61 million) again held the top two spots. However, CBS was third with 1.51 million of those watchers, while NBC slipped to fourth with 1.46 million. CNN and MSNBC were fifth and sixth, respectively, with 903,838 and 625,712.
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