Finally James Hibberd of Live Feed came up with the preliminary impact of Sarah Palin on the Oprah Winfrey Show and the results ran true to form. Palin drew the largest audience for Oprah in over two years achieving an 8.7 household rating and a 13 share of audience.
For those of you not media savvy, and I would be one of you except I worked in the media in NYC, that translates to about 14 million people watching the show. As I said in an earlier article, Oprah has been averaging about 7 million viewers per show so Sarah basically doubled the audience during November sweeps month, the most important month of the year when ad rates are determined.
It remains to be seen whether Oprah doubling her audience because of Palin or Palin selling books will benefit the most but clearly both of these powerful women are national celebrities and powerhouses.
Now, so you can compare this to other ratings, Katie Couric averages about 5.6 million viewers, David Letterman about 3.8 million, Bill O'Rielly about 5 million while Fox News averages 1.3 million and MSNBC News averages about 381,000, yes less than one third of the Fox viewers.
No wonder they are lined up and salivating at the chance to get Sarah on their shows.
