New York, Jan 10 (IANS): US President Donald Trumps prime-time address, a nine-minute speech from the Oval Office on border security and the government shutdown, on Tuesday night drew roughly 40 million TV viewers, according to statistics.

According to the statistics released on Wednesday by Nielsen, a leading global information and measurement company, the audience fell short of Trump's State of the Union address last January which drew about 45.6 million viewers and past landmark presidential moments, like Barack Obama's announcement of the death of former Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in 2011, which reached 56.5 million people, reports The New York Times.

The viewers included nearly 16 million across the three big cable news channels -- Fox News, CNN and MSNBC -- a major jump in their usual weeknight audience.

The rest 24 million watched special bulletins on major broadcast networks.

The Nielsen measurement, however, does not include Americans who watched online livestreams of Trump's remarks.

It was the President's first formal Oval Office address and he thanked supporters afterward on Twitter "for soooo many nice comments".