48 Million Tune In To Presidential Debate

Rentrak Corporation, the leader in multi-screen media measurement serving the advertising, television and entertainment industries, today announced ratings information from Tuesday night's presidential debate, the second between President Obama and GOP candidate, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney .

Tuesday's town hall-style debate took place at Hofstra University and was moderated by CNN's Candy Crowley . Questions covered a range of topics including foreign and domestic policy and were submitted by the audience.

Viewing habits varied slightly during the second debate with fewer people tuning in, but watching longer. The total viewing audience fell from 49.1 million households during the first debate to 48.0 million households during the second debate. People did watch more of the debate this time with 75.7% of the total minutes of the debate being watched by the average home, up from 73.0% during the first debate. In terms of the traditional average audience rating in the first debate, it was a 31.2 which grew slightly to 31.7 during the second debate.

Selected markets reported on by Rentrak during the first debate showed the biggest relative drop in viewing coming from Traverse City and Grand Rapids, Michigan, which both fell about 8% below the average in the U.S.

Bruce Goerlich , Chief Research Officer at Rentrak said, "With less than one month to go before Election Day, Rentrak's TV ratings illuminate how politics has its own intense followers."

The final debate, covering foreign policy, will be held on October 22 and will be moderated by CBS correspondent, Bob Schieffer .

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