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Audience for Trump's 1st State of the Union trails Obama's 2010 address

President Donald Trump’s inaugural State of the Union, which called for Congressional approval for a vast infrastructure program, fell short of his predecessor’s comparable address.

Covered live by 12 networks starting at 9 p.m. ET and continuing until 10:30 p.m. ET, Trump's first State of the Union speech averaged 45.6 million viewers, according to live + same-day data from Nielsen Holdings.

That combined delivery was 5% lower than the just over 48.0 million average audience for President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union speech on Jan. 27, 2010, across 11 networks.

ABC (US), CBS (US), FOX (US), FOX News Channel (US), FOX Business Network (US), Univision (US), PBS (US), CNN (US), NBC (US), MSNBC (US), Telemundo and Estrella all presented Trump's talk on Jan. 30.

Trump’s first speech of this kind, however, had ratings of 45.6% above Obama's last State of the Union address on Jan. 12, 2016, which averaged 31.3 million viewers. A dozen networks carried that Obama speech live, while Univision presented it on a delayed basis.

Historically, the audiences for State of the Union coverage drops over the term of a president. Obama's finale ranks as the lowest State of the Union audience, according to Nielsen data.

Trump’s first State of the Union trailed the 47.7 million average audience for his address to the joint session of Congress on Feb. 28, 2017, which was televised by 11 broadcast and cable networks. Obama's first address to the joint session of Congress on Feb. 24, 2009, averaged 52.4 million viewers across 10 networks.

According to Nielsen data, President Bill Clinton's inaugural speech before a joint session of Congress on Feb. 17, 1993, garnered the largest of these audiences, playing before 66.9 million viewers on CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN that night.

The average viewership for Clinton's speech also ranks higher than any of the State of Union addresses measured by Nielsen. The most watched State of the Union was President George W. Bush's on Jan. 28, 2003 — a few weeks before the U.S. sent troops to Iraq — which drew 62.1 million viewers.