Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:07 pm
President Obama’s critics often complain that he is overexposed and on television too much, but the ratings disagree. The latest example of this was the president’s Monday night appearance on David Letterman’s The Late Show. Obama delivered Letterman his highest ratings in four years and over 7 million total viewers. It seems that Americans still like to watch this president.
Here is the video:
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
The size of the victory for Letterman was pretty stunning. Letterman beat Conan O’Brien’s The Tonight Show in every audience category, and absolutely trounced O’Brien 7.218 million viewers to 2. 44 million. Obama ‘s appearance on Letterman also meant good things for CBS’ The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, which pulled in its biggest audience ever of 3.2 million. Ferguson also beat all of his competition, and he outdrew Conan O’Brien.
Over at NBC, the transition from Leno to Conan has not gone smoothly. O’Brien has lost Leno’s older audience, while have Leno himself back on the network at 10 PM has not helped The Tonight Show in the least. Some people may wonder why President Obama chose to appear on Letterman over O’Brien. The answer has everything to do with show location. O’Brien is located in Los Angeles now, but Obama was already heading to address the UN, so it made sense for him to appear on the NYC based Letterman.
All of the right wing whining about Obama being overexposed has its basis in their own hopes that people will get sick of seeing Obama. However, the ratings continue to demonstrate that when this president hits the talk show circuit, people tune in, which tells me that a majority of Americans still like this president, and will tune in to see what he has to say.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
