The numbers are in, and it was another lackluster year in terms of live telecast viewership of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.
Nielsen reports 31.7 million people tuned in to the various networks that hosted the annual telecast, down from 33.3 million in 2014.
The low viewership comes as no surprise, really. There’s been a steady decline in telecast viewership over the past several years, but the 2015 audience was the smallest audience that Obama has drawn since taking office in 2009. During his first address, about 52.4 million people tuned in.
Social media participation in the address, however, was high. Some 2.6 million tweets were sent out during the hour-long address, Nielsen noted, with 44,000 tweets being sent out after the now-infamous moment when the President noted he had no more campaigns to run.
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