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Was Trump’s inauguration the most-streamed of all time?
By ALEX WEPRIN 01/23/17 03:09 PM EST
In Sean Spicer’s first official daily press briefing on Monday, he said that when you factor in people who streamed President Donald Trump’s inauguration online, it would make it the most-watched presidential inauguration in history.
He has a point, but it is one that is almost impossible to prove. The reason? TV ratings and online streaming metrics are not an apples-to-apples comparison, so there is no easy way to calculate exactly how many people watched the inauguration online in a way that is comparable to TV viewership data released by Nielsen.
TV viewership for the inauguration was 30.6 million people, according to Nielsen, down from just under 38 million viewers in 2009. Still, those ratings were good enough to top the inaugurations of Bill Clinton and both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush.
In general, video streaming has been on the rise over the past decade, while linear TV viewership (people watching TV live on their television sets) has declined, but there is not yet data that brings together TV and online video viewership.
Spicer cited CNN’s 17 million streams of Trump’s inauguration, which he added to the 2.6 million that watched CNN live on TV. The problem with that is that the 2.6 million figure is not the total number of people that watched CNN, it was the average number of people that watched. The 17 million streams are the total number of streams, not the average number of people watching. That 17 million figure may include people that reloaded the webpage, or that clicked in and watched for 30 seconds, or people where the inauguration started to auto-play on the CNN story they clicked through.
By MADELINE CONWAY
There is also data that suggests that Obama’s inauguration in 2009 saw more live streams, despite the proliferation of live streaming video in recent years.
While CNN had 17 million streams in 2017, in 2009 it said it had more than 21 million streams, which, when combined with CNN’s higher TV viewership in 2009, would seem to undercut Spicer’s claim. CNN did peak with 2.3 million simultaneous streaming viewers, up from 1.3 million simultaneous viewers in 2009, but that may be due to the fact that live streaming technology has improved to the point where networks are simply able to handle the higher bandwidth today than they were eight years ago.
It is fair to assume that streaming numbers for Fox News improved in 2017, just as its linear TV viewership improved, but Fox has not made those numbers available, and again, there is no easy way to compare them directly to TV ratings.
That lack of transparency and lack of apples-to-apples comparison means that it is essentially impossible to know whether enough people watched Trump’s inauguration online to overtake Obama’s in 2009, which also had some substantial online streaming.
Was Trump’s inauguration the most-streamed of all time?
By ALEX WEPRIN 01/23/17 03:09 PM EST
In Sean Spicer’s first official daily press briefing on Monday, he said that when you factor in people who streamed President Donald Trump’s inauguration online, it would make it the most-watched presidential inauguration in history.
He has a point, but it is one that is almost impossible to prove. The reason? TV ratings and online streaming metrics are not an apples-to-apples comparison, so there is no easy way to calculate exactly how many people watched the inauguration online in a way that is comparable to TV viewership data released by Nielsen.
TV viewership for the inauguration was 30.6 million people, according to Nielsen, down from just under 38 million viewers in 2009. Still, those ratings were good enough to top the inaugurations of Bill Clinton and both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush.
In general, video streaming has been on the rise over the past decade, while linear TV viewership (people watching TV live on their television sets) has declined, but there is not yet data that brings together TV and online video viewership.
Spicer cited CNN’s 17 million streams of Trump’s inauguration, which he added to the 2.6 million that watched CNN live on TV. The problem with that is that the 2.6 million figure is not the total number of people that watched CNN, it was the average number of people that watched. The 17 million streams are the total number of streams, not the average number of people watching. That 17 million figure may include people that reloaded the webpage, or that clicked in and watched for 30 seconds, or people where the inauguration started to auto-play on the CNN story they clicked through.
By MADELINE CONWAY
There is also data that suggests that Obama’s inauguration in 2009 saw more live streams, despite the proliferation of live streaming video in recent years.
While CNN had 17 million streams in 2017, in 2009 it said it had more than 21 million streams, which, when combined with CNN’s higher TV viewership in 2009, would seem to undercut Spicer’s claim. CNN did peak with 2.3 million simultaneous streaming viewers, up from 1.3 million simultaneous viewers in 2009, but that may be due to the fact that live streaming technology has improved to the point where networks are simply able to handle the higher bandwidth today than they were eight years ago.
It is fair to assume that streaming numbers for Fox News improved in 2017, just as its linear TV viewership improved, but Fox has not made those numbers available, and again, there is no easy way to compare them directly to TV ratings.
That lack of transparency and lack of apples-to-apples comparison means that it is essentially impossible to know whether enough people watched Trump’s inauguration online to overtake Obama’s in 2009, which also had some substantial online streaming.