NBC’s Meet the Press with Chuck Todd marked yet another week as the No. 1 Sunday politics program in all relevant audience measurements.
However, each of the Sunday public affairs shows were down double digits in the A25-54 demo compared to the same Sunday in 2018.
The Feb. 10 broadcast represented MTP’s 54th consecutive win over its ABC and CBS competition in A25-54, 34th straight win over ABC in total viewers and 11th win over CBS out of the last 12 broadcasts in total viewers.
An additional 917,000 total viewers and 183,000 A25-54 viewers watched MTP through repeats on NBC and MSNBC.
The NBC Sunday public affairs show was -8 percent in total viewers and -24 percent in A25-54 vs. the comparable Sunday last year, which was a Winter Olympics Sunday. (-24 percent is still a lot, however).
ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, on the other hand, was the sole Sunday show to post year-over-year total audience growth (+2 percent). The program has now improved on the year-ago Sunday 3 of the past 4 weeks. No easy feat right now. The ABC Sunday show finished No. 3 in total viewers and No. 2 in the key A25-54 demo.
CBS’ Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan was -3 percent in total viewers and -11 percent in A25-54 viewers vs. the comparable Sunday in 2018. The program finished No. 2 in total viewers, but No. 3 in A25-54 viewers.
Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace on Fox Broadcasting was -12 percent in total viewers and -21 percent in A25-54 viewers vs. the year-ago Sunday. The cable replays delivered a combined 2.49 million total viewers and 342,000 demo viewers. Altogether, that’s 3.83 million total viewers and 734,000 demo viewers on Feb. 10.
There are lots of caveats in regard to FNS’ Feb. 10 ratings. The program was pre-empted in Birmingham, Alabama at 9 a.m. ET due to local coverage of the 2019 Mercedes marathon. Fox News Sunday aired 2:30-3:30 a.m. ET (Monday morning) in Birmingham which is not included in the Sunday broadcast average. In addition, FNS was also pre-empted in Fresno, Portland and San Francisco due to Daytona 500 coverage on Fox.
The numbers for Feb. 10, 2019:
| Network | Program | Total Viewers | A25-54 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NBC | Meet the Press | 3,772,000 | 935,000 |
| CBS | Face the Nation (1/2 hr) | 3,334,000 | 693,000 |
| ABC | This Week | 3,191,000 | 744,000 |
| FOX | Fox News Sunday | 1,341,000 | 392,000 |