2020 elections: TV ratings were down for both the RNC and DNC
29 August 2020
Data: Nielsen; Note: Night one of the 2008 and 2012 conventions were pushed due to hurricanes; Chart: Naema Ahmed/Axios
Increasing partisanship, competing streaming options and the mostly virtual nature of this year's programming may help explain why TV ratings for both conventions were way down compared with 2016.
Why it matters: Ratings are not a proxy for popularity or voter enthusiasm, but they do provide a loose sense of which party and figures are capturing the attention of the country.
By the numbers: Viewership for the Republican National Convention was down about 21% on average this year across all four nights compared with 2016, per figures from Nielsen, while the Democratic National Convention's was down about 17%.
- The DNC averaged 21.57 million viewers in the 10 p.m. prime-time hour across the four nights that it aired last week, while the RNC averaged 18.8 million viewers over that period this week.
- President Trump's nomination acceptance speech at the White House on Thursday was watched by 23.8 million people, just shy of the 24.6 million people who tuned in for Joe Biden's speech the week before.
The numbers show how increasing partisanship in America may be curtailing viewership.
- The ratings drop for the RNC and the DNC were heaviest in viewership via traditional broadcast networks like CBS, NBC and ABC, compared to cable. Broadcast news networks tend to attract less partisan viewers than their cable counterparts.
- Fox News received the most total viewers among all networks, cable and broadcast, across all four days of the RNC, while MSNBC beat out all other broadcast and cable networks for every night of the DNC.
Between the lines: There's no way of measuring exactly how many people streamed the conventions or watched clips on social channels, but presumably, millions more Americans tuned in online via streaming and clips on social media.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.