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Season Finale: CNN’s Ratings During Obama Speech Are a Milestone
By Brian Stelter

It is extremely rare for a cable news channel to draw higher ratings than the broadcast networks, but CNN apparently managed to pull it off on Tuesday night, when its telecast of Barack Obama’s victory speech attracted 4.73 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Only one broadcaster, ABC, interrupted its entertainment programming for the speech. While ratings for the special report are not yet available, ABC never topped four million for all of prime time on Tuesday, according to Nielsen. Another 3.45 million viewers watched the speech on MSNBC.

It may have been only the second time in history that a cable network attracted more viewers than a broadcaster during a major news event. Television news executives contacted on Wednesday said they could only think of one other time: the Republican National Convention in 2004, when Fox News Channel drew more viewers than the broadcast networks.

The ratings throughout the primary season have demonstrated that cable news channels continue to supplant broadcasters as primary sources of news. In further evidence of that shift, CBS chose only to broadcast Mr. Obama’s speech to audiences on the West Coast, where it was not yet prime time, and NBC offered brief cut-ins, encouraging viewers to watch continuing coverage on MSNBC.

The cable channels CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel have been offering wall-to-wall coverage of the Democratic primary, far more so than on the big broadcast networks, ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox.

Fox News Channel, a cable cousin of the Fox broadcast network, is normally the top-rated news channel, but on Tuesday it placed third for the night, drawing an average of 2.45 million viewers at 10 p.m. By contrast, CNN’s ratings during Mr. Obama’s speech represented the largest primary night audience for cable news this year.