It was a quiet Independence Day weekend on the Sunday shows front, and all posted audience declines versus the comparable Sunday in 2016 (July 3).
NBC News made the decision to re-title Meet the Press with Chuck Todd due to the holiday weekend (“Meet the Press-MTP”), which means the July 2nd ratings are excluded from the season averages. Nevertheless, MTP still managed to win the week both in the A25-54 news demo and in total viewers, despite being down year-over-year.
ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos did not re-title this past Sunday’s episode. The program finished in second place in both the news demo (-3 percent) and in total viewers (-9 percent). Season to date, This Week is improving in total viewers (+1 percent) versus the same point last season, and it’s drawing its largest overall audience since the 1998-99 season.
CBS’s Face the Nation with John Dickerson finished in third place this past both in total viewers and in the news demo. FTN was down double digits from the Independence Day weekend episode last year, both in total viewers (-14 percent) and in the demo (-14 percent).
As NBC News did with MTP, CBS News decided to re-title Face the Nation to “Face-Nation,” due to the holiday. These ratings are excluded from the season averages.
With John Roberts sitting in for Chris Wallace, Fox News Sunday suffered the most significant year-over-year decline, -27 percent in total viewers and -39 percent in the news demo. The program’s cable replays (2 p.m., 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. ET) delivered 2.63 million viewers and 590,000 A25-54. Combined with the original broadcast on FOX, the July 2nd episode of FNS delivered 3.65 million total viewers and 864,000 from the demo.
Al Punto hosted by Jorge Ramos was -22 percent in total viewers and -18 percent in the key A25-54 demo versus the comparable Sunday last year. The Univision Sunday public affairs show continues to out-perform ABC and CBS among millennial viewers, and is posting double digit total audience growth versus last year.
The numbers for July 2:
| Network | Program | Total Viewers | A25-54 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NBC | Meet the Press | 2.903 M | 780,000 |
| ABC | This Week | 2.713 M | 689,000 |
| CBS | Face the Nation | 2.685 M | 581,000 |
| FOX | Fox News Sunday | 1.020 M | 274,000 |
| UNIV | Al Punto | 536,000 | 235,000 |