Nielsen reports that President Barack Obama’s first primetime news conference on Monday (8-9 pm ET) hit a combined 30.8 household rating with 49,455,133 viewers. The networks were ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, Univision, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC. That’s strong, but below the 64.3 million who watched President Bill Clinton’s first news conference in 1993 or the 64.8 million who watched President George Bush’s press conference in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks. As for the Obama broadcast, ABC had the most viewers, 11.49 million, with CBS at 9.78 and NBC close behind at 9.75 million.
