The world is over: Politics beats football in Nashville

"Those awards are great, Al, but let's see you shake off Ray Lewis."

The preliminary TV ratings are in this morning, and woe to competing cable programming: the debate scored a whopping 57.7 in the area, equivalent to 586,405 homes according to our friends at NewsChannel5. In comparison, the first debate scored a 40.6 (412,618 homes), and last week's VP debate hit 53.0 (538,639).

The debate rating knocked off the previous local high of the past decade: the 2003 AFC Championship Game between the Titans and the Oakland Raiders, which scored a 54.7. I just wish Nielsen conducted a viewer satisfaction poll, because I'm pretty sure both programs would score lower than last week's Project Runway.

(Photo credit: Larry McCormack/The Tennessean)

We like our political TV in these parts

Nashvillians, be proud: we're doing our democratic duty by plopping down in front of the TV for the debates (and apparently, we were 30 percent more interested this time around). From our friends at NewsChannel5 via e-mail:

"The combined ratings for latest night’s Vice Presidential debate in Nashville scored a local rating of a 53.0. That is equivalent to 537,747 local homes.

The combined ratings for the first Presidential debate on September 26^th was a 40.6, equating to 412,293 local homes.

The combined rating was achieved by taking the combined ratings of 8 sources (WTVF, WSMV, WKRN, WZTV, PBS, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC."

Remember, we had the fifth-highest percentage of viewers for the first presidential debate (at least in the prelim ratings). Now we just need to beat Memphis.