he most important tally won't come until November, of course, but viewers ''voted'' with their TV clickers for the Democrats over the Republicans when it came to convention coverage.
According to Nielsen Media Research, the Democratic National Convention drew an average of 20.6 million viewers each night this week, compared with the 19.2 million who tuned in for the Republican confab in late July.
But it can hardly be said that interest in national politics is robust. The above totals represent the combined viewership of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and the Fox News Channel. By comparison, a single episode of ''Survivor'' on CBS drew nearly 29 million viewers Wednesday night.
Moreover, viewership of both conventions continued a downward trend on the three major broadcast networks, which is likely to further accelerate the coverage cutbacks that drew criticism this year. The combined audience for ABC, CBS, and NBC dropped an estimated 11 percent from the levels for the Democratic convention four years ago, and 4 percent from the 1996 GOP audience.
Even the hype surrounding Democratic nominee Al Gore's acceptance speech was not enough to arrest the decline. The audience for Gore's speech Thursday night was an estimated 18.5 million viewers, 15 percent fewer than watched Bill Clinton accept the Democratic nomination in 1996. It was, however, more than the 18 million people who watched the acceptance speech by Republican nominee George W. Bush last month.
With regard to overall convention coverage, ABC was the top-ranked network this week, with NBC a close second, and CBS third.
The Public Broadcasting Service and two of the three all-news cable networks also saw their audiences jump this week compared with the GOP convention. PBS averaged 3 million viewers for the Democrats, up from 2.6 million for the Republicans, while CNN averaged 1.6 million viewers for the Democratic convention compared with 1.3 million for the GOP.
MSNBC also increased its audience, from 442,000 to 659,000. However, the Fox News Channel's audience dropped from an average of 821,000 during the GOP convention to just 462,000 during the Democratic gathering.
In Boston, audience size for NBC (on WHDH-TV, Channel 7) and ABC (on WCVB-TV, Channel 5) virtually deadlocked over the four-day Democratic convention, with each network averaging around 113,000 households. CBS, seen locally on WBZ-TV (Channel 4), averaged 64,000 households.
