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    Biden’s State of the Union draws audience of 27.3 million

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments1041 Views
    President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

    By David Bauder, Media Writer

    NEW YORK (AP) --

    An estimated 27.3 million people watched President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on television, the second smallest audience for the annual event in at least 30 years, the Nielsen company said on Wednesday.

    It was also down nearly 28% from the 38.2 million people who saw Biden's address in 2022.

    The only smaller audience since 1993 was the 26.9 million who watched Biden's address to Congress in 2021 — not officially a State of the Union speech, since he had just taken office a few months earlier. That speech was delivered on the unusually late date of April 28.

    Nielsen did not have figures available from before President Bill Clinton's first address to Congress, which reached 66.9 million people in 1993, when entertainment options were fewer.

    Nearly three-quarters (73%) of the people who watched Biden's speech were 55 and older, Nielsen said. Only 5% were young adults under age 35.

    The speech was carried live on 16 television networks.

    Biden's largest audience came on Fox News Channel, where the speech was seen by 4.69 million people, Nielsen said. ABC had 4.41 million viewers for Biden, NBC had 3.78 million, CBS had 3.64 million, MSNBC had 3.55 million, CNN had 2.4 million and the Fox broadcast network had 1.66 million.

    Tags:NielsenPresident Joe BidenState of the Union



    Ex-OpenAI engineer who raised legal concerns about the technology he helped build has died

    Saturday, December 21, 2024
    Suchir Balaji poses for a photo in Hawaii in 2018. Balaji was a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who died in November 2024. (Balaji Ramamurthy via AP)

    Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who helped train the artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT and later said he believed those practices violated copyright law, has died, according to his parents and San Francisco officials. He was 26.

    Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before quitting in August. He was well-regarded by colleagues at the San Francisco company, where a co-founder this week called him one of OpenAI's strongest contributors who was essential to developing some of its products.

    "We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news and our hearts go out to Suchir's loved ones during this difficult time," said a statement from OpenAI.

    Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on Nov. 26 in what police said "appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation." The city's chief medical examiner's office confirmed the manner of death to be suicide.

    His parents Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy said they are still seeking answers, describing their son as a "happy, smart and brave young man" who loved to hike and recently returned from a trip with friends.

    Balaji grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and first arrived at the fledgling AI research lab for a 2018 summer internship while studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned a few years later to work at OpenAI, where one of his first projects, called WebGPT, helped pave the way for ChatGPT.

    "Suchir's contributions to this project were essential, and it wouldn't have succeeded without him," said OpenAI co-founder John Schulman in a social media post memorializing Balaji. Schulman, who recruited Balaji to his team, said what... Read More

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