TV Ratings: Trump's First SOTU Dips From 2017 Speech in Early Numbers

Donald Trump gave his first State of the Union on Tuesday night, his second formal address since taking office, and the presidential spiel naturally dominated evening ratings — though it seems to be off some from his first go in the House chamber in 2017.

Early returns, based on Nielsen's 56 metered markets, have the hour-plus speech pulling a combined 14.8 overnight rating among households on the broadcast networks. That's between 9 and 10:30 p.m., and only counts for four of the seven major networks bng the speech. Compared to the same stats for the same networks a year ago, that's off roughly 9 percent from his 2017 speech. (Trump's 2017 address pulled a combined 16 overnight rating among metered market households, ultimately earning 48 million viewers with all networks tallied.)

Trump's speech ran longer than usual for a SOTU, an hour and twenty minutes. And, going off of these very early numbers, his speech will likely fall shy of both his performance in 2017 and Barack Obama's first SOTU in office in 2010.

For a presidency, addresses tend to start high (of late, with an unofficial speech weeks into office) and steadily lose steam — with obvious exceptions in times of war or uncertainty. Obama kicked off the first of his eight addresses in the House chamber with 52.4 million viewers in 2009. That was followed by modest drop, in 2010, to 48 million viewers. Over the course of the Obama presidency, tune-in gradually declined roughly 20 million viewers to a low for his last address: 31.3 million in 2016.

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