By Susan Duclos
Nielsen finds that there were less viewers for Barack Obama's 2013 State of the Union address than has been seen since Bill Clinton's 2000 SOTU and, in fact, less have watched Obama's SOTU's each and every year since his first.
Via Nielsen:
The address was carried live from approximately 9:00 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. on 15 networks and tape delayed on Univision. The sum of the average audience for those networks was 33.5 million viewers with a combined household rating of 21.8. The networks carrying the address were FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Azteca, Univision, MundoFox, CNBC, CNN, Fox Business, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, Current, Centric and Galavision.
Politico:
Obama's totals also marked a significant decline from the first second-term addresses of his predecessors. President George W. Bush's first second-term State of the Union address, in Feb. 2005, drew 39.4 million viewers. President Clinton's first second-term address, in Jan. 1997, drew 41.1 million.
In general, viewership for Obama's State of the Union addresses has been in constant decline. He drew 52.4 million in 2009, 48.0 million in 2010, 42.8 million in 2011 and 37.8 million in 2012. His 2013 address was the second-lowest rated since Nielsen began recording viewership in 1993
You can see the viewership history of those past speeches at Nielsen's ratings here.
Despite Obama's high likability ratings, more and more people seem to be tuning him and his rhetoric out.
Some say it is Obama's divisive continued partisan attacks and policies, as Dr. Ben Carson once again pointed out in response to Obama's 2013 SOTU, when he sent a message to Obama via Fox and Friends, saying "You've got to realize that you're the president of everybody." (Video here)
It is just as likely that in addition to the reason Carson gave, Obama's dismal approval ratings on key issues, has just as much to do with the fact that American's seem less interested in Obama's spin of the state of the union, and his planned continuation of his failed policies.
Just the day before Obama's speech, Gallup found that Obama managed to receive majority approval for just one out of nine key issues, the majority of respondents disapprove of his handling of five out of the nine, and a plurality disapprove of Obama's performance on three out of nine.In summary, the more Obama seems to talk, the less American's seem willing to listen to him.