A Big Turnout For Debate 2

Held on a Tuesday and in the midst of a nerve-rattling Wall Street free fall, the second presidential debate between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama clocked at least 63 million viewers.

That's the biggest crowd to watch Oval Office contenders square off since the second debate of the 1992 presidential race, when President George H.W. Bush faced Bill Clinton and H. Ross Perot, and drew 69.9 million viewers.

Tuesday's debate, moderated by NBC News' Tom Brokaw from Belmont University in Nashville, logged about 10 million more people than had watched the first debate between McCain (R-Ariz.) and Obama (D-Ill.), on Sept. 26 at the University of Mississippi.

That one averaged 52.4 million viewers among multiple broadcast and cable networks, Nielsen Media Research said. The number grows to 55 million if you add PBS's estimate of its audience for that debate. Nielsen has not included PBS numbers in any of its debate tallies, including Tuesday's.

PBS estimates 2.8 million watched this week's town-hall-style debate on public TV stations, which would bring Tuesday's total take to about 66 million.

This year, between the first debate and the second, Wall Street went into a tailspin and the federal government passed a $700 billion bailout package. However, Tuesday's debate had such a deja-vu-ness to it, with neither candidate veering much from well-rehearsed talking points to address the scary new economic developments, it was almost surprising to see the goosed ratings when they came out yesterday. But, of course, the first debate had been held on a Friday night.

Note to the Commission on Presidential Debates: If you want to launch your next debate season with a bang, don't schedule the first one on a Friday -- a night when far fewer people watch television. You can't do better than to open on a Thursday -- a very big TV night in this country. Just look at this year's first and only vice presidential debate. That smackdown, between Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), wound up clocking 70 million -- 73.5 million if you think PBS viewers should count, as we do -- concerned voters and lovers of train-wreck TV hoping to get a sneak peek at Tina Fey's skit on the next "Saturday Night Live."

Pulling together, those unlikely bedfellows became the second largest audience for a debate of any kind -- vice presidential or presidential -- in U.S. history, behind only the 81 million-strong crowd that watched the single debate between then-President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980. Everybody wins.

Once again, ABC News logged the largest audience -- 13.2 million -- for Tuesday's McCain-Obama debate. ABC has had the lead across all three debates, with one debate to go.

NBC was next, with 10.9 million viewers, followed by CBS's 9.4 million, CNN's 9.2 million and Fox News Channel's 8.8 million.

Fox broadcast network clocked 5.3 million viewers, and MSNBC 3.8 mil.

And, like we said, public TV stations accounted for 2.8 million more viewers by PBS estimates.