Donald Trump was the big winner on Sunday.
NBC’s Meet the Press with Chuck Todd was the top-rated Sunday public affairs program in both total viewers and the key A25-54 demo on August 16. Todd interviewed Trump, while every other Sunday show anchor started candidate interviews with questions about… yup, Trump.
Just last month, the presidential candidate said, “you have sleepy eyes Chuck Todd, who does Meet the Press, which is failing in the ratings.”
Trump’s appearance gave Todd his biggest win over CBS’ Face the Nation with John Dickerson since August 2012. It was MTP’s largest total audience since February 2014 and the best performance in the demo since March 1.
ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos‘s demo win streak ends at 11 consecutive weeks after finishing third, while FTN finished second in the demo and third in total viewers.
MTP delivered an additional 1 million total viewers and 439,000 in the demo with rebroadcasts on NBC network and MSNBC. Fox News Sunday combined with cable replays for 3.5 million viewers. Replays on FNC averaged a combined 2.32 million total viewers and 346,000 in the demo.
Face the Nation is based on the first half-hour only, as the full contiguous hour aired in just 76.3% of the country.
The numbers for August 16:
| Network | Program | Total Viewers | A25-54 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NBC | Meet the Press | 3.61M | 1.0M |
| CBS | Face the Nation | 2.83M | 800,000 |
| ABC | This Week | 2.87M | 773,000 |
| FOX | Fox News Sunday | 1.17M | 336,000 |
| UNIV | Al Punto* |
*Al Punto numbers will be added as they become available.