The Lead
Meet the Press featured the first network sit-down with Donald Trump since winning the 2024 election against Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. It also marked the first time a network news anchor interviewed Trump since September 2023, as he never appeared for a sit-down conversation during the run-up to Election Day.
The interview — conducted by Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker — was a ratings winner for the NBC News program. The show, which has finished behind both Face the Nation on CBS and This Week with George Stephanopoulos on ABC in recent months, topped the Sunday political affairs program ratings last week. Nearly 3 million total viewers tuned in to hear the comments from Trump. Additionally, the discussion has earned more than 4.5 million views on YouTube.
For the week, Face the Nation — hosted by Margaret Brennan — saw 2.7 million viewers, while the Stephanopoulos-led show earned 2.4 million total viewers.
In the coveted Adults 25-54 demographic, Meet the Press led with 569,000 compared to 438,000 for the CBS News show and 430,000 for ABC News.
FOX News Sunday, which is helmed by Shannon Bream, earned just over 1 million total viewers and 227,000 viewers in the Adults 25-54 demo.
Nightly Network News Ratings Race Tightens
ABC World News Tonight with David Muir has been the highest-rated nightly network news program for several years. But, at times, the gap between it and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt has contracted. The week of December 2nd was one of those times, as the Holt-led show earned an additional 116,000 total viewers for the week.
Muir’s program led the way with 7.9 million total viewers, while NBC Nightly News saw 6.3 million viewers. Meanwhile, as Norah O’Donnell enters her final weeks hosting the CBS Evening News, that show featured 4.7 million viewers for the week, on average. That represented a nearly 300,000 viewer increase for the program that will soon be hosted by Brennan, John Dickerson, and Maurice DuBois.
Despite the gains in the overall ratings for NBC News, ABC News actually widened the gap slightly in the key Adults 25-54 demographic for the week. The network saw 1.1 million viewers from the demo, while NBC News featured 929,000, down slightly from the previous week.
CBS News saw its key demo audience at 696,000 viewers.
Patriot Awards Top 1 Million
The FOX Nation streaming platform held its annual Patriot Awards on Thursday, December 5th. A re-broadcast of the program was shown on Fox News on Sunday, December 8th in the 10 PM-Midnight ET window.
During the rebroadcast, hosted by network mainstay Sean Hannity after FOX & Friends Weekend host Pete Hegseth departed the network to join the second Trump Administration as the Defense Secretary nominee, more than 1 million viewers tuned into the event.
President-elect Donald Trump was named Patriot of the Year by the conservative cable network. Additionally, longtime Hollywood actor Kirk Cameron was presented with the Culture Warrior Award.
Meanwhile, Fox News personalities like Will Cain, Rachel Campos-Duffy, Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, Harris Faulkner, Bill Hemmer, Abby Hornacek, Lydia Hu, Laura Ingraham, Johnny Joey Jones, Lawrence Jones, Brian Kilmeade, Martha MacCallum, Dana Perino, Judge Jeanine Pirro, and Jesse Watters made appearances at the event.
Viewership totals for the live broadcast on the FOX Nation platform were not made available.
Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
