Pres. Trump insulted Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd during a Saturday night rally in Pennsylvania. The move didn’t seem to hurt NBC’s Sunday public affairs program in the ratings department. In fact, it may have helped.
Meet the Press continued to dominate the competition this past weekend, winning the Sunday show ratings race in all key measurements for the 7th consecutive week, per Nielsen data. But the program was down -2 percent in total viewers and down -8 percent in the key demo versus the same Sunday last year. But that’s far better than how its competition performed on “spring forward Sunday.”
Season to-date, MTP is the most-watched Sunday show across-the-board and is posting its largest advantage over ABC and CBS in total viewers in 6 years.
An additional 995,000 total viewers and 257,000 demo viewers tuned into MTP through rebroadcasts on NBC and MSNBC.
Todd addressed the criticism during the broadcast during his exclusive interview with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, to which the Trump cabinet member responded by saying: “He’s using these vulgarities in the context of a campaign rally, and obviously there were a lot of funny moments at that rally.” Todd also talked to Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos finished No. 3 in total viewers, and No. 2 in the key A25-54 demo this past week. ABC has now defeated CBS in the Sunday politics ratings race 17 of the last 21 weeks in the demo. But the broadcast was -10 percent in total viewers, and -17 percent in the demo from last year.
CBS Face the Nation With Margaret Brennan finished No. 2 in total viewers, and No. 3 in the demo this past week. But the program struggled relative to Daylight Savings Sunday 2017, -16 percent in total viewers and -23 percent in the key A25-54 demo.
Fox News Sunday on FOX was down -15 percent in total viewers, and down -18 percent in the demo from last year. But the program was up +19 percent in the Washington DC market. John Roberts sat in for Chris Wallace as moderator of the program.
The trio of FNS replays on Fox News posted a combined 2.52 million total viewers, and 585,000 demo viewers. Altogether, that’s 3.84 million total viewers and 999,000 demo viewers.
The numbers for March 11:
| Network | Program | Total Viewers | A25-54 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NBC | Meet the Press | 3.733 M | 1.069M |
| CBS | Face the Nation (1/2 hr) | 2.933 M | 644,000 |
| ABC | This Week | 2.732M | 691,000 |
| FOX | Fox News Sunday | 1.318M | 414,000 |