Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump's entire political career was made possible by his turn on the show The Apprentice, where he semi-convincingly played the role of a successful businessman. He's always been obsessed with numerical markers of his greatness, whether that is dollars in the bank, or (alleged) IQ points, or Nobel Prizes received. His time as a reality TV star added an obsession with TV ratings to that list. Since he got his first social media account (on eX-Twitter), do you know how many times he's mentioned ratings in a tweet or a truth? The total number is 605. And the pace has accelerated, since 395 of those were on eX-Twitter, which he used for about 11 years (so, about 35.9 "ratings" tweets per year), while 210 of them were on Truth Social, which he has used for about 5 years (so, about 42 "ratings" truths per year).
We can assure readers, beyond any and all doubt, that we would be merciless with any politician, and especially with any president, who made it so plain that ratings is the thing they really and truly care about. It is not only pathetic, but it's self-centered and it's small-minded. We have no doubt that there are many politicians who take notice of their TV ratings, and who like to see high numbers (Gavin Newsom seems very likely to be in this group, and J.D. Vance and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, as well), but at least they don't obsess over them openly, in public.
In view of Trump's obsession with ratings, and our resultant disdain, we are all-but-guaranteed to take note of it, in this space, when the President has a ratings disaster. And so he did this week. Katie Pavlich used to work at Fox. Now she works at News Nation. Maybe her former employer gave her some added cred, or maybe the White House doesn't actually know she's changed jobs. Whatever the case might be, Trump agreed to sit down with her for a long-form interview.
Perhaps the problem was that News Nation is a much-less-trafficked channel than other cable "news" stations, and is often located at a more obscure place in the list of channels. Perhaps the problem was that the audience the channel does reach is not the audience that wants to hear from Trump. Perhaps the problem was that NO audience particularly wants to hear from Trump anymore, since it's the same old shtick these days. Whatever the explanation is, Trump's appearance drew a viewership of... 75,000. That is not a typo, and there is no missing zero.
The other "news" stations, in that same timeslot, drew between 656,000 viewers (CNN) and 2.6 million viewers (Fox). So, even if we just limit ourselves to "news" broadcasts (making sure to also include the 1.38 million viewers for MS NOW), then Trump attracted just 1.5% of the news-viewing audience (and far, far less than 1% of the overall audience). Meanwhile, here are 10 selected programming options that usually (or always) attract more than 75,000 viewers:
It's not good when you can't out-draw a show that left the air over half a century ago. And you know, these days, Gunsmoke comes with a title-card warning that "this program contains outdated cultural depictions; viewer discretion is advised." They probably should add that to Trump's interviews. In any case, we're guessing this will not inspire "ratings" truth #211. (Z)