Convention: Third-night ratings; O’Reilly attacks critics

A look at the Democratic National Convention through a media lens:

Just over 24 million people watched the Democratic national convention’s third night on six commercial networks, highlighted by President Barack Obama’s speech boosting Hillary Clinton as his successor.

That was down by less than half a million from the second night, the Nielsen company said. Once again, CNN was the top choice to watch the convention, with the news network logging 6.17 million viewers between 10 p.m. ET and the convention’s close.

Nielsen also said an estimated 2.56 million tweets about the convention’s third night were sent out. That compares to 1.6 million for the third night of the GOP confab last week. So far, Democrats have been generating more Twitter traffic every night.

SLAVES: Bill O’Reilly says he wasn’t trying to defend slavery with his remark that slaves who helped build the White House “were well-fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government.” He angrily lashed out Wednesday night at critics, who he said “want me dead, literally dead.” Among his critics were “Tonight” show bandleader Questlove, who said via Instagram that “there is nothing more dangerous than a man in a suit pretending to be a journalist giving revisionist history on the ugliness that was slavery.”

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MEMORIES: His eyes moist, CNN analyst David Axelrod didn’t pretend to be impartial about his former boss, President Barack Obama, following the president’s address. “I love the man,” he said. “In these big moments, he was able to rise up and speak about what is great about this country when the country needed it. I’m just very proud of him tonight.”

NO PUEDE: Fox News’ Tucker Carlson was bothered by Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine occasionally using Spanish phrases in his speech; time spent in Honduras made Kaine fluent in the language. Carlson said Kaine was, in effect, endorsing bilingualism. “I think this is symbolically important and something we should think about,” he said.

David Bauder, The Associated Press