"Oh," said Mrs. Dr. Phil, momentarily surprised to find her foot in her mouth.
"I have several pinkies in heaven. I call them pinkies," Heinz Kerry explained.
John and Teresa Heinz Kerry, left, with Phil McGraw and his wife, Robin, after last month's taping of the "Dr. Phil" show that ran yesterday.
(Sharon Farmer -- AP)
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"And now you have two daughters," responded Mrs. Dr. Phil brightly.
Nearly 44 million people tuned in to Tuesday night's slugfest between Vice President Dick "The Undertaker" Cheney and Sen. John "Atticus" Edwards, making it the most watched vice presidental debate since the three-way with Republican Dan Quayle, Democrat Al Gore and Reform Party candidate James Stockdale, Ross Perot's running mate, more than a decade ago.
Tuesday's audience, accumulated among ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC, represents about 14.5 million more viewers than caught the polite exchange between Cheney and Sen. Joe Lieberman in 2000.
Big winner Tuesday night? FNC with 7.8 million viewers -- up 454 percent compared with the 2000 veep debate, when it averaged 1.4 million.
The cable news network nearly ran with the broadcast pack. CBS copped about 9.2 million viewers for the debate, ABC 10.3 million and NBC the largest audience, 11.5 million viewers. Billed as a 90-minute debate, it ran nearly 15 minutes long, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Though CNN and MSNBC trailed, they, too, had something to brag about. CNN, with 3.3 million viewers, was up nearly 60 percent compared with 2000, while MSNBC's average of 1.5 million viewers was up 230 percent from 2000's 451,000.
As was the case last week when Nielsen put out its numbers on the first presidential debate, it did not include the viewers who watched on PBS. And in what can only be called a TV miracle, the public television network reports that more people watched the vice presidential debate on PBS than had watched its presidential debate telecast. According to PBS estimates, 3.3 million people chose to watch Tuesday's debate on PBS; 3.1 million had picked PBS as their network of choice for the first debate between Kerry and Bush. We're fairly confident that this has never happened before in the history of TV, that a network garnered more viewers for a veep debate than a debate between the candidates vying to be leader of the free world. From which we can conclude that PBS viewers are more concerned about who becomes No. 2 than No. 1. When we figure out what that says about PBS and the people who watch it, we'll get back to you.
