No Box-Office Smash

It's official: The Democratic National Convention is not a reality-show hit.

Just-released Nielsen numbers show that television ratings for Monday night, despite the heavily touted Bill Clinton speech, were down 10 percent from the first night of the Democratic gathering in Los Angeles four years ago.

The combined audience for CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC was 18.4 million, compared to 20.4 million four years ago.

All the broadcast networks, which have been criticized for devoting only three hours each to live convention coverage, took a hit. Ratings numbers for ABC dropped from 4.8 to 3.1, for NBC from 4.8 to 3.3, and for CBS from 3.8 to 3.2. (One ratings point is equal to 1.08 million households.)

This will give a boost to those who say the broadcast networks have made a rational decision in the face of convention ratings that have been declining for decades.

A small portion of the audience, however, is migrating to cable. Fox was up dramatically, from 0.3 to 1.1, reflecting its rapid growth since 2000. CNN won the night on cable, rising from 1.3 last time to 1.5, and MSNBC, which is anchoring its coverage from Faneuil Hall, was up from 0.5 to 0.7.