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 Entertainment | May 2006 
Bush's Speech on Immigration Draws Large Audience
 Reuters
| | President Bush sits at his desk after delivering an address to the nation from the Oval Office, May 15, 2006. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) |
President George W. Bush's TV address outlining plans to send National Guard troops to the Mexican border drew twice as many viewers as a speech last June urging Americans to stand firm in Iraq, Nielsen Media Research reported on Tuesday.
Live coverage of Bush's 15-minute prime-time speech on Monday from the Oval Office averaged nearly 46 million viewers combined on four major U.S. broadcast networks, four leading cable news channels and three Spanish-language networks, Nielsen said.
Spanish-speaking viewers accounted for 4.3 million of the total, according to Nielsen.
The overall tally doubled the 23 million viewers who tuned in to watch Bush's half-hour prime-time speech from a North Carolina military base last June, when he sought to bolster sagging public support for continued U.S. involvement in the Iraq war.
On Monday, Bush said he would deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and said illegal immigrants should be offered a chance to become citizens through a temporary guest-worker program.
Last year's speech on Iraq drew the smallest TV audience of his tenure.
By comparison, Monday night's address on immigration reform averaged more viewers than either of his last two State of the Union addresses (41.7 million and 38.4 million, respectively), though both of those speeches ran at least an hour long. |
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