Bad but not as bad as initially reported. But still bad.

I just saw a report that only 11.6 million people watched Biden's State of the Union address.  Trumps equivalent first address drew 48 million viewers.  

I have never been a fan of State of the Union addresses and usually do not watch them.  But a drop from 48 million to 11.6 million is pretty alarming as an indicator of public disengagement from Establishment Politics and the mainstream media.  

Hoping it not to be true, I search for the facts.  I am not sure I have them but CNN is reporting that actual viewership was 26.9 million.  A decline of 44%.  Woof.  Not as bad as first reported but still pretty bad.

The CNN does its duty as the party organ for the DNC, attempting to explain it all away.  "Nothing to see here.  Move on."  They lead with the bad news.

Nielsen estimated that 26.9 million people watched the speech across 16 cable and broadcast networks on Wednesday night.

Former President Donald Trump's equivalent address to Congress in 2017 averaged 48 million viewers.

And his State of the Union address last year, shortly before the pandemic, averaged 37 million viewers.

And then try and downplay it.

The pandemic accelerated what has already been evident for years: Gradual erosion in live TV audiences in the United States.

Simply put, as more people spend more time watching on-demand programming, the public is less inclined to watch live events. Sagging ratings for award shows like the Emmys and the Oscars have underscored this trend.

Additionally, Nielsen's live-TV estimates don't account for all the ways an event like a presidential address is delivered all across the internet, not to mention radio and other formats.

There is some soggy center to the first argument, even less to the second and none at all to the third.  They did their best.  But it comes across as a reprise of the old Hide the Decline scandal when the establishment worked so hard to creatively disguise a truth blurted out accidentally by their own side in the AGW debate.