If the Obama campaign was hoping Wednesday night's debacle in Denver would go unnoticed, The Nielsen Company has some bad news: More than 67 million Americans tuned in to watch the first televised debate between President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

That’s a 28% increase over 2008’s Obama-McCain debate, according to Joanne Ostrow of The Denver Post. That makes it the highest rated first election-season debate since 1980 and the most watched presidential debate since 1992.

Surprisingly, 12 million of those viewers were 18- to-34-year-olds. The bulk of the audience, 30 million, were age 55-plus, Ostrow notes.

Most accounts had Romney cleaning Obama's clock in the Mile High City.

Here's Nielsen's breakdown by network:

CBS: 10,576,000
ABC: 11,252,000
NBC: 11,069,000
FOX: 6,977,000

FOX NEW CHANNEL: 10,421,380
CNN: 6,045,109
MSNBC: 4,710,511