More than 18.76 million Americans turned to NBC News to witness history being made as Senator Barack Obama became the first African American ever to be sworn in as President of the United States. With Brian Williams anchoring coverage along with Tom Brokaw and Lester Holt, NBC News was the #1 broadcast network in all key measurements drawing 12.21 million viewers from 12 – 1 PM, and 8.65 million viewers from 10 AM – 5 PM, according to Nielsen Fast Nationals. NBC News also won in A25-54 from 12 – 1 PM, with 5.18 million viewers, compared to ABC's 4.52 million viewers and CBS's 3.21 million viewers.
MSNBC's coverage of the Presidential Inauguration averaged 2.95 million viewers and 1.05 million A25-54 between 12-1 p.m. ET, as President Obama was officially sworn in. Between 10 a.m.-5 p.m., the network averaged 2.19 million viewers (766,000 A25-54). In primetime, "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" finished ahead of Fox News at 8 p.m. (969,000 vs. 819,000 A25-54), as did the 5 p.m. telecast of "Hardball with Chris Matthews" (839,000 vs. 775,000 A25-54).
Msnbc.com shattered records as millions of consumers turned to the site for its complete coverage of the Inauguration of President Obama (). On Tuesday, msnbc.com had a record-breaking 4 million unique visitors in a single hour, as users watched the live video stream of the swearing in and Inaugural address from 11 a.m. – Noon (ET).* It had more than 16.4 million unique visitors on its site throughout the day. Msnbc.com also had a record breaking 9.1 million live streams for the day.* The site had more than 154 million page views and 18.2 million total online video streams – a new video stream record (breaking the previous record set during coverage of Virginia Tech).*
Msnbc.com was the only site to offer consumers the innovative Inauguration "Video Explorer." This exclusive video technology was developed in partnership with Nexidia and is only available on msnbc.com. With Video Explorer, consumers can easily search transcripts from past Inaugural Speeches, find specific passages of video and embed those clips onto their sites and blogs. Consumers can search inaugural addresses dating back to the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt up through yesterday's speech by President Barack Obama. Msnbc.com's exclusive Video Explorer is available at .
Msnbc.com's comprehensive Inaugural coverage features original journalism, exclusive multimedia features, live votes, and video from NBC News and MSNBC Cable. Msnbc.com video generated more than 5.2 million embedded streams of video.* Msnbc.com was the first major site to enable consumers to be able to embed video onto their own sites and blogs.
Msnbc.com is the #1 Current Events and Global News site for seven months running, with more than 40 million unique users in December 2008, according to Nielsen Online. Msnbc.com has reached the 40 million unique visitor milestone for five consecutive months, while both CNN.com and Yahoo! News have reached it only once.**
*Source: Omniture SiteCatalyst
**Source: Nielsen Online