Barack Obama's campaign "infomercial" drew 33.6 million viewers on seven networks last night, playing on CBS, NBC, Fox, BET, Univision, MSNBC and TV One, according to Nielsen Media Research.
The Democratic presidential candidate's 30-minute message Wednesday night garnered 2.1 million more viewers on CBS, NBC and Fox combined than those three networks drew in the same half-hour last Wednesday.
For NBC and CBS, the Obama ad marked an audience bump of 43 percent and 11 percent respectively over last week's action drama "Knight Rider" (7 million viewers) and the sitcom "The New Adventures of Old Christine" (7.8 million). (Msnbc.com is a joint venture between NBC Universal and Microsoft.)
Fox did better last week with its World Series pre-game broadcast -- 9.6 million viewers.
The climax to Wednesday's baseball championship was delayed by 15 minutes to allow Fox to air the Obama ad without interrupting its coverage of the game.
The infomercial drew fewer than half the 57.4 million viewers averaged by the three recent presidential debates between Obama and Republican rival John McCain which aired on 11 commercial networks in all.
The Obama ad also was carried on the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision and cable channels MSNBC, BET and TV. No viewership figures were immediately available from those channels.
The infomercial blended pre-taped segments of Obama directly addressing viewers with a video montage of the nominee on the campaign trail and ordinary Americans of their economic struggles. It concluded with Obama addressing a live campaign rally in Florida.
It was a throwback to a political advertising strategy that was common in the 1950s and '60s and marked the first such paid national political telecast since Ross Perot ran a series during his independent bid for president in 1992.
