Transcript of Democrats surge to convention ratings win over Republicans

A re-energized Democratic Party managed to turn that enthusiasm and support into a win, at least when it comes to TV ratings. Every night of the DNC had more Americans tuning in compared to the corresponding night at the RNC. Cnn's media correspondent, Hadass Gold, joins us now. Hadass, what do the numbers show?

Well, the numbers show this is according to Nielsen. So across the television networks that Nielsen ranks, the DNC out shown the RNC Every single night, you can see there, all four nights of the DNC out shown the RNC when it comes to the ratings. Across the four nights, the average was also even greater, 21.8 millions for the DNC versus 19.07 million for the Republican National Convention. Then when we look at the actual candidate speeches of Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump, Harris's speech brought in 28.9 million, whereas Trump brought in 28.4 million. It's not a huge difference, but we all know that Donald Trump is obsessed with ratings, so I'm sure this is something that might be rankling him. Now, these ratings beat out the 2020 DNC and RNC ratings, but they do lag behind 2016, 2012, 2008. But keep in mind that the way we watch TV is, of course, changing, and Nielsen does not rank things like streamers, YouTube, Twitch, social media, and those. We could even have even more millions of people who were watching on those streamers. But if you look at also where we were when these conventions took place, when Trump took the stage at the RNC, it was just days after his assassination attempt.

It was the first time he was making a major speech after he almost lost his life. But Joe Biden was still the candidate at that time. He would end up dropping out just days after that. There's a lot of interest in Kamala Harris as the candidate. There's a lot of excitement, a re-energized party. Also, the Democrats just had bigger names at their convention. They They had the Clintons, they had the Obamas, they had Oprah, and they had big performers like Stevie Wonder, John Legend, and Pink. Yes, there was Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan at the RNC. But just when you look at the number of names, big names, these marquee speakers, the Democrats just had more people. Then, of course, there were all of those rumors that Queen Bay, Queen Beyoncé, was going to show up and potentially perform or somehow appear at the DNC. Of course, that did not end up happening.

Well, speaking of Beyoncé, for for example, should the DNC have come out and just said on the record, She's not coming, because it did seem to create this parallel narrative to the obvious special guest who was the vice president accepting the nomination. In some ways, did all this buzz and the failure to just get on the record and tamp it down, did that backfire at all?

Well, it's not for nothing. Keep in mind, because multiple people close to the convention were telling CNN on Thursday that they believed that Beyoncé was going to be in attendance. And we had major media figures, including people like Gayle King, who was saying on air on CBS that she believed that the rumors were true, that Beyoncé was going to show up. Tmz, also keep in mind, was reporting full fact that it was going to happen, that Beyoncé was going to show up. And Beyoncé's own camp didn't come out themselves and shut this down until literally 30 minutes before the vice president was supposed to take the stage. So I think that there is something there. Potentially, maybe there were some actual conversations happening. There needs to be more reporting done into exactly what happened between Beyoncé and Kamala Harris's campaign. For everybody, it made sense, right? Because Kamala Harris is, of course, using Beyoncé's song, Freedom. She got permission from Beyoncé to use that song at her campaign. And I think when everybody heard that song, Freedom, right before the vice President took the stage, I think a lot of us were thinking that Beyoncé was going to come out from behind the stage and sing it live on that stage, but didn't happen, unfortunately for us.

And I want to note that Cina did not officially report that she was going to be there because the sources that were telling us that did not have direct knowledge. It didn't meet our standards. But with the D&C now over, Harris is now, of course, facing calls to do an interview or at least a town hall or a press conference. What do you think of her strategy so far to resist these calls?

I think that she was trying to hold things off for as long as possible because she was getting a lot of attention. There was a lot of excitement. She was riding the wave as much as she could. But she has said that she is going to do some interview by the end of the month. She has about a week left until that end of the month. We have not heard anything from any major network or newspaper or anything like that, that she is going to be sitting down and doing an interview with them. Now, while this is mostly probably journalists and people in the political world who are calling for this to happen, the drum beat is definitely growing. This has become a regular attack line from the Trump campaign. Right before I went on air with you, I was watching Fox News, and this was a segment they were talking about. They were saying, Where is Kamal Harris? And she does need to sit down and answer some tough questions from an independent journalist.

And Hadass, really quickly, the Foo fighters right now in the political news. What can you tell us?

Yeah, so the Trump campaign played the Foo fighters song, My Hero, during that Kennedy endorsement that he got yesterday. As Kennedy walked out, they played the Foo fighters song My Hero. Foo fighters have come out and said they did not approve of this. They want the Trump campaign to stop using it. And they actually said that any royalties that they get from the Trump campaign using the song, they're actually going to donate to the Harris Walls campaign. Paula.

Hadass Gold, thank you.