About 40 million people watched Barack Obama’s acceptance speech on Thursday. Nielsen Media Research said today that 38.4 million viewers plus another 75,000 who were present at the football home of the Denver Broncos witnessed his accepting the Democratic presidential nomination. Moreover the noncommercial outlet PBS estimates another 3.5 million viewers. This actually topped the most watched night of the Beijing Olympic Games that had 34.9 million viewers, it also topped the final season of “American Idol” (31.7 million) back in May as well as this year’s Oscar Ceremony with its 32 million rating.

The third day of the 2004 convention, when John Kerry was nominated, had nearly 18 million viewers. Day two that year, which was not shown by the broadcasters, had 5.9 million. Bill Clinton had 27 million watchers back in 1992 and Al Gore had 22 million in 2000.

Nielsen stated that this was the most-watched convention since 1960 when they started measuring audience. But it is likely that this one rated far more than the 1960 one because it even surpassed by half a million the Republican convention of 1976, previously top-rated.

“The stagecraft was so phenomenal,” Andrea Mitchell told MSNBC, continuing with “I don’t know how they could have done it any better.” Although the Democrats didn’t really get great feedback the final night of their convention in the first place, it ended up being compared to a Greek temple.

The Republican convention is set to kick off Monday therefore no final conclusions can be drawn until this one comes to an end as well.