Dartblog

If one includes PBS, it turns out that more folks watched Sarah Palin than watched Barack Obama. When the numbers settle, she may have given the most-watched political convention address in history. And, mark, four entire networks that featured Mr. Obama’s speech failed to televise Mrs. Palin’s: BET, TV One, Univision and Telemundo. “Barack Obama apparently isn’t the only ‘rock star’ in presidential politics this year,” writes the Associated Press, tears glinting dimly through the copy.

It’s the Republican Vice President versus the Democratic President. And John McCain? A known quantity, reliable, the F-150 of the United States, a little boring, but known and liked.

UPDATE: One of the pollsters just came out with a report which includes this line: “Voters are evenly divided as to whether Palin or Obama has the better experience to be President.”

UPDATE: Since readers are asking about this, here is the very latest, per a Bloomberg wire piece.

Nielsen, which reports on network and cable viewership, has John McCain with the most-watched political convention speech in history, at 38.9 million viewers; Barack Obama had 38.4, and that includes two extra channels which covered him but not Mr. McCain, Mrs. Palin, or Mr. Biden; Sarah Palin was a smash as well, with 37.2 million; and Joe Biden beckoned 24 million.

But these numbers consider neither C-SPAN nor PBS. Those two numbers in sum can alter the rank of the top three names.

E! (How exciting!) which is rather expert in these matters, says that one likes to assess a major event on a viewers-per-channel basis. Sarah Palin, E! writes in a headline, beat Barack Obama by attracting more viewers-per-channel—roughly, E! reports, 3 million per channel for Mr. Obama and 6 million per channel for Mrs. Palin.