State of the Union watched by 43mln

President Barack Obama drew a television audience of 43 million for his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, according to the Nielsen Co.

The TV audience was 11% smaller than in 2010, when just over 48 million tuned into his first State of the Union address, and 18% smaller than in 2009, when nearly 52.4 million watched his first address to a joint session of Congress just after he took office.

In all, Nielsen said 11 networks carried the speech, including ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, TEL, UNI, CNN, Centric, CNBC, FOXNC, and MSNBC.