Many media pundits are citing the impressive number of television viewers that saw Barack Obama’s Presidential inauguration. According to Nielsen 37.8 million television viewers watched at home between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. This places Obama’s inauguration in second place to Reagan’s first inauguration in 1981 which had 41.8 million television viewers.

However, I don’t believe this truly reflects the true viewing audience since it doesn’t take into account out of home or Internet viewers. CNN alone served over 25 million streams during the entire day, and at its peak the news site saw some 1.3 million simultaneous video streams. Akamai Technologies, who hosts video streams for several web sites, reported a record of 7.7 million concurrent video streams on inauguration day. Mogulus Technologies that hosts video for C-Span and USA Today reported around 105,000 concurrent streams. As of today, other key websites with live video streaming including MSNBC, Fox News, Hulu and The New York Times have not made their traffic numbers public, but we can assume they all saw significant increases in web viewers based on information that sites like CNN forced viewers to wait in line for an available stream.

Based on my analysis of the numbers available from CNN and Akamai it can be estimated that at least 46.9 million viewers saw Obama’s.

Of course, in 1981 there was no Internet, and most people outside of their homes had to see the inauguration via television. Nielsen doesn’t offer out of home viewing for either inauguration so an ‘apples to apples’ comparison is impossible. We also need to take into account that many of the requested video streams might have originated outside of the United States, which further complicates an external analysis. There is also the matter that since 1981 the U.S. population grew by 70 million so President Elect Obama had close to a third greater potential audience. But if you consider a comparison based on total population, we’d have to tip our hat to Reagan for having captured 18.2% of the total U.S. population versus Obama’s 15.5%, based on our total viewership estimate.

Still, the figures that I am using for video streams are very conservative, since they account only for concurrent connections, and not total viewers between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., as is the basis of Nielsen’s analysis. Furthermore, for both at home and out of home viewing, TV viewership has eroded considerably by any standard since 1981. People are much more likely now to watch or follow a live news event via the internet. Therefore I believe that internet viewership must be taken into account when considering audience levels. This is why I find it difficult to stick to the figure of 37.8 million for Obama’s inauguration. A complete comparison may be impossible given the lack of data, but what is evident is that the internet should always be tallied alongside TV viewing for important events like these.