Democratic Convention Draws Well on TV

By Paul Kurtz

CAMDEN, N.J. (CBS) -- The Democratic National Convention was a winner in Wednesday night's Nielsen ratings.

About 25 million people tuned in on the night Bill Clinton took center stage -- roughly one million more than the audience for opening night in the NFL.

PHOTOS: 2012 Democratic Convention

Rutgers-Camden political science department chairman Richard Harris says he's surprised, given the audience fragmentation that now permeates today's media, "given the change in the media landscape, from an earlier time when you had the three major broadcast networks, to competition from cable and satellite, there's social media and the Internet...  The people that generally watch conventions nowadays tend to be the faithful," he notes.

There was another surprise over at CNN, where the convention's audience of 2.4 million people couldn't beat the numbers watching Wednesday's episode of "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" on the TLC cable network.

Of the seven networks that aired the convention on Wednesday night, ABC was the winner with an audience of approximately 4.6 million viewers.   CBS right behind with 4.4 million.

One other comparison to make: day two of the Democratic convention pulled in about 3 million more viewers than those who tuned into the second night of the Republican convention last week.