NBC’s Meet the Press with Chuck Todd earned another first place finish in the Sunday show race. The program also posted year-over-year audience growth on April 2, while ABC, FOX and CBS saw declines from the same Sunday last year (April 3, 2016).
MTP delivered +5 percent growth in total viewers and +8 percent growth in the all-important A25-54 demo from the comparable Sunday last year. The episode featured both Senate party leaders Sen. Mitch McConnell and Sen. Chuck Schumer, as well as former FBI agent Clint Watts, who discussed Russian info operations after testifying on Capitol Hill earlier in the week.
Meet the Press has been the most-watched Sunday show across the board for 10 of the past 11 weeks.
CBS’s Face the Nation with John Dickerson came in second, both in total viewers and in the news demo. The episode delivered a -6 percent decline in total viewers and a -5 percent decline in the demo relative to the comparable Sunday audience in 2016.
ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos had a less than stellar week, at least relative to last year. The program finished in third place, -7 percent in total viewers and -14 percent in the demo versus the comparable Sunday in 2016. Nevertheless, This Week is hauling in its largest overall audience in 18 years– since the 1998-99 season.
Fox News Sunday hosted by Chris Wallace posted double-digit declines of -13 percent in total viewers and -14 percent in the news demo versus the comparable Sunday last year. Interestingly, the program actually showed year-over-year total viewer growth in the DC market (+6 percent). The trio of cable replays delivered 2.74 million total viewers and 610,000 from the demo. Altogether, the April 2 edition of Fox News Sunday hauled in a combined 4.2 million total viewers and 1.05 million from the demo.
Al Punto hosted by Jorge Ramos posted +1 percent year-over-year improvement in total viewers this past Sunday, but a significant decline in viewers from the A25-54 news demo (-19 percent). Despite the year-over-year decline among A25-54 viewers, Al Punto remains ahead of both CBS and FOX among millennials this season to-date, and is delivering double digit year-over-year growth this season in all of the key audience categories.
*Face the Nation is based on the first half-hour only.
The numbers for April 2:
| Network | Program | Total Viewers | A25-54 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NBC | Meet the Press | 3.837M | 1.196M |
| CBS | Face the Nation | 3.746M | 888,000 |
| ABC | This Week | 2.888M | 793,000 |
| FOX | Fox News Sunday | 1.424M | 442,000 |
| UNIV | Al Punto | 635,000 | 258,000 |