Pols, NFL and Honey Boo Boo Duked It Out for Attention

Sept. 7, 2012 -- intro: Republicans and Democrats not only had to fend off attacks from each other during their made-for-TV conventions over the past two weeks, they also had to fend off competition for audiences from the likes of NFL football and Honey Boo Boo.

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quicklist: 1title:Honey Boo Boo Steals the Showtext: Honey Boo Boo, the sassy child pageant princess and star of TLC's hit TV show "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" gave politicians a run for their money. When she appeared opposite the Republican National Convention last week, she drew 3 million viewers. Fox News, which carried the convention, was Boo Boo's closest competition at 1.2 million viewers, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The networks combined, however, had more viewers than she did.

Honey Boo Boo's audience slipped to 2.4 million when she went up against Bill Clinton's rousing speech at the Democrats' convention this week, according to the Nielsen ratings. But her audience was still big enough to tie CNN's audience of the Clinton speech.

quicklist: 2title:Clinton Trumps the New York Giantstext:The Dallas Cowboys upset the New York Giants this week with a 24-17 scoreboard, but they are not the only ones who trumped the reigning super bowl champions. Bill Clinton's primetime speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte beat the NFL season kickoff game in viewer ratings.

An estimated 25.1 million people tuned in on Wednesday night to listen to Clinton's rousing endorsement of President Obama between the hours of 10 p.m. and 11 p.m.

The NFL couldn't keep up with the former president, receiving only about 20 million viewers during the second half of the Giants' home opener against the Dallas Cowboys.

Clinton did not only outshine football fanatics in viewer ratings this week, but he also showed up Paul Ryan. The vice presidential candidate had over 3 million fewer viewers then Clinton did during his speech on night two of the convention in Tampa.

quicklist: 3title:DNC Shows Up the RNCtext:This week the Democrats upstaged the Republicans on the national stage in viewership during the 2012 conventions. According to Nielsen, the Democratic National Convention had 26.2 million people tuning in on the opening night in Charlotte, N.C., when first lady Michelle Obama was the featured speaker.

That number surpassed the 22.3 million viewers who watched the Republican National Convention on the first night in Tampa, Fla., when Ann Romney, wife of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney spoke.

quicklist: 4title:Obama the DNC Cyber Startext: On Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention, President Obama gained a new entry in Internet history when he become the most tweeted politician. A whopping 52,756 Tweets in the minute following the conclusion of Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention set a new record for political tweets per minute.

According to internal Twitter data "the final day of the convention delivered roughly 4 million Tweets— approximately equal to the total number from the entire Republican National Convention." A bulk of those tweets were delivered during the president's acceptance speech officially making him the most tweeted politician.