Trump’s 2016 Cleveland convention is over and done. He promised showbiz and ratings, and delivered a mediocre performance.
Trump’s Convention Acceptance Speech (2016): The Modern Cult of Personality
No surprise to anyone paying attention, before the final ratings were actually announced this past Friday, Trump was punditificating, in his own bombastic style, what a huge success it had all been.
From the New York Times:
At an appearance here on Friday morning, Mr. Trump described his ratings this week as “through the roof,” and he wrote on Twitter that the convention was “one of the best produced, including the incredible stage & set, in the history of conventions.”
“Big T.V. ratings!” Mr. Trump added.
That was before the actual Nielsen figures were released. Asked on Friday evening if Mr. Trump wished to comment further, a spokeswoman said the campaign was deferring to Mr. Trump’s earlier remarks.
Until his capture of the Republican presidential nomination this past week, Trump’s second major claim to business fame was his ‘mastery’ of television spectacle (primarily based on the success of The Apprentice).
Television is Donald J. Trump’s comfort zone, the medium where he ruled as master of “The Apprentice,” lured record audiences to Republican primary debates, and deftly outmaneuvered opponents with his camera-ready skills.
For politicos and producers alike, the Republican National Convention here this week was widely anticipated as a ratings bonanza.
It did not live up to the hype.
About 32 million Americans watched Mr. Trump’s climactic acceptance speech on Thursday evening on the major cable news and broadcast channels, according to ratings from Nielsen, released on Friday.
Mr. Trump’s remarks, at an hour and 15 minutes the longest in modern convention history, just beat out those of the previous Republican nominee, the decidedly less unpredictable Mitt Romney, who was seen by about 1.9 million fewer viewers when he addressed the party’s convention four years ago. Viewership throughout the convention week was about the same as in 2012.
But the 2016 race, with its unlikely cast of candidates and dramatic twists, had been attracting record audiences to cable news networks throughout the past year. The 19.8 million viewers who watched the Republican convention on Tuesday, across all the major news networks, was notably less than the 24 million who tuned in for the first Republican primary debate on Fox News last August.
The Real TV Deal (Facts are Stubborn Things)
In 21st century America, we will have completed five 4-year presidential convention cycles at the end of this week (July 28). This amounts to 20% of the entire total for this century, and gives us a reasonable data set of 10 presidential nomination acceptance night TV ratings to compare.
Thanks to many reporting sources, and particularly the Nielsen ratings (the Gold standard of TV viewership measurement)*, we can compare, as nearly as possible, apples to apples, for the convention popularity of the candidates among American voters at the same point in the election process over time.
See the two charts below, with the data arranged first by year, and then by total TV viewers on the final night, when the presidential candidates accept the nomination of their party. This fourth night has always been the highest rated night of each convention since 2000, regardless of party.
For the 20-year period of the 21st century covered by the five sets of conventions since 2000, the total final night viewership rose steadily until 2008, when it peaked for both parties. The 2012 totals fell off a bit. In 2016 Trump managed to recover somewhat from 2012, but still lagged well behind 2008 numbers. Clinton’s performance will not be known until this Friday to complete the 10-point data set.
However, looked at in the most favorable light for Trump, the very best he can muster is a distinctly middling 4th place finish (out of 10), an out of the money performance, massively below non-hero, prisoner-of-war loser Republican John McCain (2008), and non-American born, secret Muslim Barack Obama (D) twice (2008 and 2012). Trump’s totals trail McCain and Obama by 16% (2008) and 10% (2012), or more than 6.2 million actual viewers (2008) and 3.5 million actual viewers (2012). These real numbers are in contrast to Trump’s own fantasy projections of his popularity and drawing power on TV. Depending on what happens Thursday in Philadelphia at the Democratic Convention, Trump may wind up in 5th place, even further behind.
Teasing out the possible effect of incumbency on these ratings, we have two examples: Bush (R) vs. Kerry (D) in 2004, and Obama (D) vs. Romney (R) in 2012. Each time the incumbents had higher convention ratings, and both won re-election to office.
In two elections, both candidates were non-incumbents, Bush (R) vs. Gore (D) in 2000 and Obama (D) vs. McCain (R) in 2008. In both cases, the candidate with higher convention ratings ultimately lost the election (Gore 2000 and McCain 2008). This comparison may be suspect, since, in fact, Gore won the popular vote (by 547 thousand) over Bush, who was chosen President only after the controversial intervention of a divided U.S. Supreme Court overturning the rulings of the Florida State Supreme Court.
Average Day-by-Day Convention Ratings
Another way to look at the TV ratings is to compare prime-time daily ratings for each of the typical 4-nights of the convention. See the chart below for the last three Republican national conventions. It is possible only to compare the last three nights of each convention, since the first day of both the 2008 and 2012 conventions were cancelled due to severe weather in the host cities.
However, McCain in 2008 beat Trump on every night, including Trump’s promised triumphal final night. Loser Romney (2012) beat Trump on prime-time Day 2, and lost to Trump by less than 2 million viewers on Day 3 and Day 4. The combined three day totals for Trump (75.1 million) and Romney (74.8 million) were nearly identical, differing by less than 1%. McCain’s three day total of 97.6 million viewers was 30% more than Trump’s combined draw.
The take-away from the TV viewership statistics in 2016 is that Trump did not provide a strong pull (coat-tail effect) for the rest of the Republican party or the presidential campaign as a whole compared to 2008 and 2012 Republican efforts. Nor did he appear to engage a significant number of disaffected Democrats or Republican-leaning independent voters.
In plain English, a TV ratings disappointment. Another broken promise made to the faithful.
This is especially so, since Trump gave a confident interview to The Washington Post in April, offering his own expert opinion:
Trump blasted the GOP’s last convention, in Tampa four years ago, as “the single most boring convention I’ve ever seen.” The billionaire real estate mogul and reality-television star said it was imperative that this year’s gathering have a “showbiz” quality — and he cast doubt on the ability of the Republican National Committee, which oversees the convention, to deliver.
“It’s very important to put some showbiz into a convention, otherwise people are going to fall asleep,” Trump said in a 45-minute interview here last week in his Trump Tower office. “We don’t have the people who know how to put showbiz into a convention.”
After he had essentially secured the nomination in May, Trump took a very hands-on approach to the convention staging, timing, and guest speaker lists, including his wife and all four of his adult children individually as featured speakers, in another first of a kind gambit.
The TV viewing public ultimately was less than thrilled or awed at the showbiz component orchestrated by Trump & family.
The Silver-Lining Good News for Trump
From the New York Times again:
Mr. Trump is a keen student of television ratings: During a recent interview, he produced a sheaf of photocopied Nielsen charts for “The Apprentice” dating to the mid-2000s, and he often calls network executives to discuss the finer points of audience data.
There is one bit of good news lurking in these otherwise rather dour statistics. In Trump’s TV heyday, his personal best audience for The Apprentice (2004-2016) occurred for the season one finale on April 15, 2004 with an audience of 28.1 million. Starting with season 8, the highest rated show episode each year never broke 10 million.
In August 2015, the audience for the first Republican debate was 24 million, with Trump on board for the fireworks.
So, for the Republican primary season finale in Cleveland with only Trump left standing, he improved his personal TV best from 28.1 million to 32.2 million, a respectable increase of almost 15%.
However, that new personal best still nets him only a fair showing in the political big=time arena, at no better than 4th place for 21st century presidential candidates.
And it is nowhere near the pinnacle of TV viewership ratings, the Super Bowl which garners 100 million or more, year after year since 2008. Nor does it rank with the most popular ever U.S. TV show finales: M*A*S*H (1983) with 125 million, Roots (1977) with 100 million, and Cheers (1993) with 93.5 million.
The Bad News for the Rest of Us
Trump and the 2016 convention TV ratings capsulized the essential Trump. He overstates, exaggerates, inflates, fibs, misleads, and doesn’t tell the truth about important numbers and concepts, repeatedly and often.
This pattern is now an ingrained life-long habit, one Trump is very proud of. In his favorite book, The Art of the Deal, ghostwriter Tony Schwartz called it “truthful hyperbole”. In a recent New Yorker radio interview, Schwartz said he made up the term when he wrote the book for Trump in 1987.** Schwartz says it was a gussied-up version of “he lies”, and Trump engages in the practice, regularly and routinely.
In truth, Trump doesn’t appear to know the difference anymore between the actual truth (real facts) and whatever story he feels like telling at any particular moment.
That approach is fine for Trump’s personal fantasy life, when aimed at himself, his friends, and family if he chooses, but it is a extraordinarily dangerous trait in someone who asks to be elected President of the United States.
Trump’s Overdrawn Rhetorical Account
As any normal person knows, if you try to write a check for $5,000 on your bank account, when all you have is an actual balance of $500, it will not go well.
Trump has spent the last year trying to pass around larger and larger rhetorical checks into the hands of America’s voters. His account is seriously overdrawn. He has now exceeded his generous Overdraft Limit as well. Will somebody please call the Sheriff?
Let’s re-purpose a 100-year old saying from the Great Depression. Don’t take any more Trump Wooden Nickels from our modern day P.T. Barnum huckster.***
Selected Sources for 2000-2016 Presidential Convention TV Ratings
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2008/historical-tv-ratings-republican-conventions.html
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2008/mccain-tops-obamas-record-breaking-ratings.html
http://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/corporate/us/en/newswire/uploads/2008/09/media_alert4.pdf
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com//2008/08/29/conventions-38-million-view-obamas-speech/
http://www.ew.com/article/2004/09/04/gop-convention-outdraws-democratic-confab-among-viewers
http://archive.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2004/09/07/gop_wins_convention_ratings/?page=full
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-07-22/mccain-tops-trump-in-gop-convention-ratings
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-donald-trumps-rnc-913569
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-rnc-viewership_us_57927d50e4b02d5d5ed19a54?section=
http://thehill.com/media/288913-fox-news-bests-major-networks-in-convention-ratings
* The Nielsen ratings given here include all viewers, age 2 and over, estimated across all major networks carrying the event.
**Jane Mayer’s article about Tony Schwartz and Donald Trump appears in the July 25, 2016, issue, of The New Yorker magazine, with the headline “Trump’s Boswell Speaks.” This terrific long-form article is worth careful reading and study.
Schwartz had ghostwritten Trump’s 1987 breakthrough memoir, earning a joint byline on the cover, half of the book’s five-hundred-thousand-dollar advance, and half of the royalties. The book was a phenomenal success, spending forty-eight weeks on the Times best-seller list, thirteen of them at No. 1. More than a million copies have been bought, generating several million dollars in royalties. The book expanded Trump’s renown far beyond New York City, making him an emblem of the successful tycoon. Edward Kosner, the former editor and publisher of New York, where Schwartz worked as a writer at the time, says, “Tony created Trump. He’s Dr. Frankenstein.”
***From the Wikipedia entry for Wooden Nickel:
In the United States, a wooden nickel is a wooden token coin, usually issued by a merchant or bank as a promotion, sometimes redeemable for a specific item such as a drink.
Scrip and tokens have often been issued locally in times of severe economic distress such as financial crises and the Civil War. During the Depression, a local bank in Tenino, Washington, issued emergency currency printed on thin shingles of wood. Blaine, Washington, soon did the same with both flat scrip and, in response to requests generated by news and word of mouth, coins that included a 5-cent piece. The Chicago World’s Fair in 1933 issued wooden nickels as souvenirs, and the tradition of wooden nickels as tokens and souvenirs continues to the present day.
In more recent times, wooden nickel trading has become more popular. Individuals can have their own personalized token made and then trade with others who also have had their own made. This is especially popular in geocaching.
An American adage, “Don’t take any wooden nickels” is considered a lighthearted reminder to be cautious in one’s dealings. This adage, too, precedes the use of wooden nickels as a replacement currency, suggesting that its origins lie not in the genuine monetary value of nickels but rather in their purely commemorative nature.
Sadly, in 2016 the reference to Trump’s wooden nickels is anything but lighthearted.