If you're like me, you don't have cable at home, because I can pay less for a subscription to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime (all together), than I can for cable and on two of the three I don't have to watch any commercials. This becomes challenging for those of us that want to be well educated about our 2016 presidential candidates and see them debate. This post isn't going to be about whether you should vote republican, democrat, independent, or another party; however, I encourage you to VOTE. This post is going to focus on the technology behind the debate itself.
It is very significant that the CNN/Facebook 2016 presidential debate on October 13th, 2015 was live-streamed. This meant that for the younger audience that typically uses their phone, tablet, computer, or blue-ray player for the content can see in real-time the interaction between the candidates.
Although normally one would need to have a subscription to view news from CNNgo (CNN's app) or login to cnn.com, the network is providing free streaming for all the 2016 presidential candidate debates. Simultaneous devices numbered 980,000, which is about 60,000 higher than the GOP debate on 9/16/15 (http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/13/media/cnn-democratic-debate-live-stream-record/).
In the first televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960, the total viewership of the debate was 70 million. Interest in the political campaign has decreased significantly since the rise of the television era and during the 2012 presidential cycle, the debates brought in 7.7 and 8.3 million viewers. Contrarily, the GOP debates for the 2016 presidential election have had 23 - 24 million viewers so far (http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/cnn-democratic-debate-ratings-expectations-214664)
I'm anxious to see what the total viewership for the first democratic debate with the television viewers calculated in is and am wondering how the live-streaming of debates will impact voter turn-out.
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