That’s the big wingnut talking point right now. They are going on how Reagan’s inauguration ratings beat out Obama’s 41.8 million to 37.8 million. Of course those numbers are just television views. How about other things like the internet? Well let’s look at the reported number of stream views for the event:
- CNN – 21.3 million
- MSNBC – 14 million
- FOX – 5 million
So internet views alone accounted for 40.3 million viewers. Add that to Obama’s television viewership and you got 78.1 million stream views. That also doesn’t take into account the number of local or international media outlets that streamed it. You can safely say Obama topped 100 million viewers.
Of course those numbers don’t matter to the right. They still live in the 80s, when people had to take off work to view the event, instead of watching it on their computer or setting their DVR and checking it out once they got home (although they could have recorded it on their shiny new BetaMax back in 81).