Thirty-Eight Million

To the record 84,000 who saw Obama's acceptance speech live, add another first: the biggest television audience for an acceptance address ever. At an estimated 38 million, it was a bigger American audience than watched the opening of the Olympics, the Oscars or the finale of American Idol. It is twice as many people who watched Kerry's acceptance speech four years ago.

Sarah Palin may have turned the head of the news people today, but for most people who even heard about it, the response was more likely to be: who?