For CBS This Morning, the Super Bowl presents one more opportunity to get people who haven’t seen the show to give it a look. Co-host Gayle King will interview President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama during CBS’ coverage of the Super Bowl, and producers hope tune in will be elevated the following morning.
But don’t expect to see any efforts to pander to football fans. “If you do something connected to the Super Bowl, you may get a short-term gain but nobody will make the connection that this is something that they should do as part of their everyday routine,” CTM executive producer Chris Licht told the Associated Press.
That’s entirely in keeping with the show’s mandate to do one thing right every morning: cover the news. “We made a promise…and we’ve delivered on it,” Licht recently told TVNewser.
While CBS This Morning remains in third place behind Today and GMA, the numbers are encouraging:
But “CTM” has gained nearly a million viewers in four years, a startling figure at a time viewer declines are the norm. ABC’s trend line is down; “Good Morning America” has lost some 400,000 viewers in the past year. “Today” has done better lately, but is still about 300,000 viewers down from four years ago, Nielsen said.