Barack Obama speech watched by 38.4m Americans

Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention pulled in a bigger US TV audience than the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, this year's American Idol final and Oscars coverage.

Latest Nielsen ratings figures show that Thursday night's speech, in which Obama accepted the Democrat presidential nomination, pulled in a total of 38.4 million viewers in the key 10pm hour across various channels that covered the event live.

Cable network CNN was the best performing of any of the channels covering it, beating the main broadcast networks.

By comparison, last month's Olympics opening ceremony attracted 34.2 million, the American Idol final in May pulled in 21.7 million and the February Oscars broadcast to 31.6 million.

However, each of these events was only live on one US channel - the Olympics on NBC, American Idol on Fox and the Oscars on ABC.

CNN's coverage was 1.5 million viewers ahead of its nearest rival, attracting 8.1 million.

ABC pulled in a total of 6.6 million, NBC attracted 6.1 million and CBS 4.7 million.

Fox News picked up 4.2 million, MSNBC had 4.1 million, while PBS drew 3.5 million viewers.

Obama's speech was also a much bigger draw than John Kerry's 2004 Democrat presidential candidate acceptance speech, pulling in 14 million more viewers.

The Republican presidential nominee John McCain is due to give his acceptance speech this week.