Were You One Of The Few Not Watching The Obama Inauguration?

Philip Stone January 21, 2009

It was the most watched event in TV history – Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. And there were very few places in this world where you would not have been able to watch that live on TV, high definition TV in some places! And of course if you didn’t have a TV nearby then you could have watched it on any number of Web sites or on your mobile phone.

In the US alone  Pew Research said before the event that 67% of Americans planned to watch and that figure of more than 200 million more than doubles the previous most watch US TV program – the last episode of the M.A.S.H. series. On election night Nielsen Media Research said that some 71 million Americans tuned in for the results.

The previous inauguration high was for President Reagan’a first inauguration in 1981 when some 42 million Americans tuned in, according to Nielsen Media Research. Just  four years ago, George Bush’s second inauguration  created an American record --  the lowest US TV audience in the past 40 years for an inauguration at 15.5 million viewers.

And talking of Bush, Tuesday had to be a somewhat bittersweet day, but Phillips Electronics chose to feature  a glum look for an ad with the tagline “For whenever you lose power” in promoting a Phillips portable charger. Now, did Phillips get Bush’s permission to use his picture in an advertisement; did Phillips get permission from whatever news agency took that picture since pictures by news agencies are for news purposes only and not for ads? We’ll leave it to the Phillips lawyers to deal with all of that.

On TV, CNN International simulcast all day its US network. The other international cable news networks all provided blanket coverage nearer to the time for the oath of office. Many countries had their own correspondents in Washington and many national stations, particularly public broadcasters,  devoted at least a couple of hours to the live ceremonies. Eurovision provided a High Definition feed  -- almost, but not quite, like being there!

Watching CNN without commercials for an hour before Obama’s inauguration until after his speech was perfect but by the time the parade began CNN started making up for lost time with its frequent commercial breaks really becoming  irritating. But switch to the other international cable news networks and by then they seemed to be back to regular programming. Then we happened upon the UK’s Sky News and they had the parade with hardly any commercial breaks -- TV on a major event as it should have remained!

But it seems CNN’s Web deal with Facebook paid off big-time for both parties. CNN.com’s live streaming accompanied by a Facebook sidebar on who was watching set records with more than 25 million online streams of live video in the 12-hour period that began at 6 a.m. Just before Obama gave his inauguration address cnn.com was serving more than 1.3 concurrent streams. CNN said that by 11 a.m. – and hour before the Obama oath was to take place – it had served up more than 8 million live video streams globally. Other networks including MSNBC and Fox also reported live streams in record millions.

Those numbers represented what most new media outlets reported – that their viewing numbers were setting records and, yes, performance, did get badly affected at times by the load. California-based Keynote Systems whose business it is to measure Internet performance says that several online sites saw significantly slower than normal response times and even CNN had to form a waiting list to get on.

Akamai  said that Tuesday was the largest day ever for the delivery of concurrent live streaming over its EdgePlatform. It said it delivered a peak of more than  7 million active simultaneous streams when Obama was speaking at 12:15 p.m.

"In addition to the historic nature of the Inauguration, it is now clear that this event has driven unprecedented demand from a global online audience," said Robert Hughes, Akamai executive vice president of Global Sales, Services, and Marketing.. "With the Inauguration occurring during work-day hours in the U.S., we witnessed record numbers of live streams served in support of many leading news businesses.”

Television viewing numbers aren’t expected from Nielsen until Wednesday afternoon, but the record-breaking Web acctivity could be a good hint that televisiion will turn in records, too, probably globally.

Tuesday belonged mostly to video but a few newspapers published afternoon special editions. Wednesday, however,  is going to be the big newspaper day. Better get to the newsstand early if you don’t have a subscription. 

The announcement by the Detroit Newspapers about their additional press run is indicative of what will be happening in many cities. “Anticipating high demand for  the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, the Detroit Media Partnership will print an additional 200,000 copies of each newspaper. These newspapers will be available for sale at more than 18,000 retail outlets and coin boxes across Michigan, as well as at the newspapers' offices in downtown Detroit. ‘We are proud to help commemorate today's historic inauguration,’ said Dave Hunke, publisher of the Detroit Free Press and CEO of Detroit Media Partnership. ‘Tomorrow's editions will be cherished keepsakes and we will do everything possible to ensure that copies are readily available.’”

Other examples include The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News each publishing a 16-page commemorative section today with The Inquirer printing an extra 73,000 over its 300,000 daily circulation and the Daily News an additional 90,000 on top of its daily 98,000 circulation. Many other newspapers will be hitting the streets with extra copies having learned the lesson from being caught short on the day after election day.  

Some like the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post published Tuesday afternoon specials with the Post charging $2 a copy instead of the normal 75 cents. And the Wall Street Journal web site is flogging press plates of its January 20 and January 21 issues at $79.99 each.

For one day, at least,  perhaps two, newspapers have an opportunity to make some much needed extra revenue. Now, how to keep that momentum going?

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