More than 67 million people watched the first presidential debate on television, making it the most highly-rated initial political debate since the 1980 bout between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.
At least several million more streamed the debate live online. Over 2.6 million people watched a Spanish-translated live stream of the debate on Univision, beating out the 1.2 million viewers who watched on CNN's website.
ABC beat out the other television networks, with 11.3 million viewers, while NBS had 11.1 million and CBS pulled in 10.6 million viewers.
Among the 24-hour cable news channels, Fox News won the ratings battle, with 10.4 million viewers. CNN trailed with 6 million, followed by MSNBC with 4.7 million.
Telemundo played the debate after the fact, on a tape delay, but still garnered 248,000 views.
None of these numbers include people who caught the debate over drinks at a local bar or in another public space, so the actual number of people paying attention to the battle between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama is likely much higher.
The digital recording service TiVo said the most rewound moment of the debate was when Romney vowed to cut funding from PBS, pledging doom for Big Bird and Sesame Street.
The viewership for this debate blows away the numbers for the first debate between Obama and McCain in 2008, which only pulled in 52.4 million viewers.
It will be interesting to see how many viewers turn out for the vice-presidential debate next week. Joe Biden was the most-watched speaker at either the Republican or Democratic National Conventions this year, beating out Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Clint Eastwood, Bill Clinton and both Obamas.
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