is there anybody out there?

Just how many people in America are paying attention to the Democratic convention? It’s hard to say, of course, but early indications are that more people tuned in (to the networks, at least) to see Hillary on Tuesday than to watch the action with Biden (and with Bill Clinton) on Wednesday night:

All the broadcast networks’ numbers fell, with NBC holding the largest audience, based on Nielsen’s overnight metered household ratings from 55 markets. NBC brought in a 4.1 rating/7 share, slipping 16% from Tuesday’s numbers.

ABC’s audience declined 24% to a 2.9/5, while CBS dropped by 11% to a 2.4/4.

I’ve only done a bit of convention-watching myself. If I’m representative of the population, the excellent entertainment provided by the Dems for an hour last night may have been for naught.

Here’s what you missed, according to David Gergen, speaking last night on CNN immediately after the end of the onstage events [e.a.]:

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I thought it was a fine speech [by Biden]. It was a serviceable speech. I don’t think it’s a memorable speech. It will never make Bill Safire’s anthology.

But what was most important in the speech, Anderson, and what I think worked both in the hall and on television was the tableau that unfolded here over the past hour.

And that I thought the Democrats had their best hour of television of the convention starting with the moment they rolled out that Spielberg film on the veterans, on honoring the Veterans in a poignant way, moving on to Beau Biden’s speech, which I thought was a home run.

That was a remarkably good speech. And then when the cameras went to Michelle Obama and you saw her tearing up as she heard again the story of the loss of the family early on, I thought that was a revealing moment for television viewers, some of whom have thought she’s an angry woman. That wasn’t an angry woman you saw tonight. She was very human.

And I think it was consistent with her own speech earlier in the week. And then Joe Biden gave a good speech. It was a solid speech but then — but what I think really helped was Barack Obama coming on. And then, it was as if the Democrats brought it all together tonight for the first time.

And I must tell you, I think the importance of tonight is that perhaps the Democrats have begun to reverse the momentum of the campaign.

John McCain has been coming on very strong against them; he’s caught up with them. They desperately needed to reverse momentum if they were to win in November. I think they started to turn it. My one single voice, it’s really the voters who counts about this, it’s the public who counts on this. We’ll wait to see what they did. But I think tonight and tomorrow night if they can reverse momentum, the Republicans will have their chance to take it back next week but I think that’s very, very important as a potential opening for the Democrats to reverse the momentum

Well, it might reverse the momentum if a lot of on-the-fence voters were watching the Dems celebrate themselves, but that doesn’t seem to be the case (outside the blogosphere, that is).

Plus: attentive readers will note that Gergen, the ultimate spouter of inside-the-Beltway conventional [no pun intended!] wisdom, says that the Dems need desperately to reverse the momentum. That should worry Obama fans—oops!—I mean: Obama supporters; they’re in love and so they’re not attentive to the arrows being slung at him from all directions.

And the arrows are coming fast and furious. Obama isn’t oblivious to them. Quite the contrary.

But first things first: he’s got a really big shew to put on tonight, folks!\