Paul Ryan not nearly the TV draw Sarah Palin was

The Associated Press, Thursday, August 30, 2012, 3:51pm (PDT)

NEW YORK (AP) -- As a Republican National Convention speaker, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan isn't nearly as much of a draw as Sarah Palin.

The Nielsen ratings company said an estimated 21.9 million people watched GOP convention coverage Wednesday night over nine networks. The marquee event was Ryan's acceptance speech as Mitt Romney's running mate.

More than 40 million people watched Palin's acceptance speech at the 2008 convention. Nielsen estimated an audience of 37.2 million in 2008 for all the networks except PBS, which pegged its audience at 3.9 million based on a slightly less complete Nielsen sample.

For the second night in a row, Fox News Channel had more viewers than anyone else covering the convention Wednesday. Fox had 7.7 million viewers during the 10 p.m. EDT hour, when all the networks were competing. NBC had 4.1 million, ABC 2.9 million, CBS 2.6 million, MSNBC 1.4 million and CNN 1.3 million.

Ryan, 42, did give a slight bump to the young viewership. Nielsen said an estimated 2.1 million people aged 18 to 34 watched Wednesday's coverage, up from 1.5 million the night before.

Overall, Wednesday's convention viewership was down slightly from the 22.3 million who watched Tuesday, the opening night.