All the networks were tuned in to watch President Obama deliver the State of the Union on Tuesday, but a lot of their viewers were tuned elsewhere.
The ratings are in, and they're not pretty: the yearly speech got its lowest ratings since 2000.
The 2014 State of the Union got 33.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen figures. That is the smallest audience Obama has gotten since he took office in 2009. In comparison, Obama's highest-rated State of the Union address was in 2009 when he drew 52.4 million viewers. Viewership has declined every year since then, and 2014's speech was down from 33.5 million last year.
Meanwhile, President Bush's smallest audience for a State of the Union was 37.5 million in 2008. President Clinton's was 31.5 million in 2000 — the lowest State of the Union ratings, as the Daily Caller pointed out, since Nielsen began tracking them in 1993.
The State of the Union ran from 9:14 p.m. to 10:20 p.m. Tuesday night. Obama discussed the economy, health care and other domestic issues, while touching on foreign policy. He is currently on a tour promoting the policies he discussed in his speech, and will sit down with CNN's Jake Tapper for his first interview after delivering the State of the Union address.