Memo to Politicos

After five weeks of exhaustive TV pulse-taking, Nielsen reported last week on viewers' reaction to the 1956 political conventions. Items:

P:Curiously, equal total audiences of 32.1 million U.S. homes viewed each of the conventions, more than twice the number that saw the 1952 shows. This meant that 88% of all TV homes saw one or more sessions of each convention over one of the three chains. Daily audiences ranged from 23 million to 27 million homes. P:TV homes watching the Democrats averaged 9 hrs. 39 min. each. For Republicans: 7 hrs. 22 min. The discrepancy is due primarily to the fact that the Democrats used afternoon and evening time for five days; the G.O.P. wound things up in four evenings, only one afternoon. P:Peak viewing (17.8 million homes) for the Democrats came during the balloting for the presidential nomination and during the acceptance speeches (15.4 million). Republicans grabbed their peak audience (19.2 million homes) on Ike's arrival in San Francisco and during the President's acceptance speech (18.3 million).

Radio also boasted a sizable turnout: P:Twenty-one million U.S. families listened to some part of the Democratic Convention. Homes tuning in averaged 6 hrs. 1 min. each. During the shorter G.O.P. week the total audience hit 15.6 million homes, for a listening average of 3 hrs. 23 min. per home. P:Daily audiences ranged from 6.5 million to 13 million homes, averaging 10.2 million homes a day for the Democrats, 8.2 million for the Republicans. P:Peak radio audiences (4 million) were clocked in during the early afternoon on the opening day of each convention.

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