The Winter of 1998/1999
On December 19, 1998: The U.S. House of Representatives voted two articles of impeachment of President Clinton. However, on February 12. 1999 following the impeachment trial, the U.S. Senate’s votes on the U.S. House of Representatives Articles of Impeachment did not get the two thirds of the Members present necessary for conviction of President Clinton. Monica Lewinsky’s search engine entry count on impeachment day is shown in Figure 4.
March 1999 was a big month for Monica Lewinsky. Her book “Monica's Story” was released, she was interviewed by Barbara Walters in a two hour prime time special, and she was on the cover of Time magazine.
ABC Research reported that 70 million viewers watched some or all of the expanded edition of the news show 20/20, featuring Barbara Walters’ exclusive interview with Monica Lewinsky. With an average audience of 48,530,000 viewers over the two hours of the telecast, it became the most-watched news program ever broadcast by a single network in television history. Monica Lewinsky wore a lipstick from Club Monaco called ”Glaze” and lip liner from Club Monaco called ”Bare” which made both products an overnight success for a small company.
Over the course of the next two days, more than one-and-a-half million unique users generating more than eight million impressions (page views) came to ABCNEWS.com. In addition, more than 12,000 users posted messages to ABCNEWS.com's bulletin boards dedicated to discussing the interview and more than 200,000 users accessed video clips from ABCNEWS.com and more than 50,000 users responded to a homepage poll asking ``If you were Hillary (Clinton), would you forgive Monica (Lewinsky)?'' 68.9% of the respondents answered ``no,'' while 31.0% responded ``yes.''