December’s Kennedy Center Honors broadcast may not have been a ratings smash, but a source familiar with the matter tells The Hollywood Reporter that it isn’t impacting the interest in the TV or streaming rights to this year’s installment, which are up for grabs and will all-but-assuredly be broadcast under the Trump Kennedy Center Honors name.
“Several outlets want to get the next contract — and CBS says they won’t lose it,” the source says.
December’s broadcast, which honored Sylvester Stallone, Kiss, Gloria Gaynor, Michael Crawford and George Strait, was the last one under the old CBS deal, with the network televising every year’s ceremony going back to 1978. Its exclusive negotiating window lapsed last year, opening up the potential pool of bidders.
The show averaged just over 3 million viewers, according to data from Nielsen, marking a low for the event, and down from the 4.1 million viewers in 2024.
The Trump Kennedy Center (which its board renamed after the ceremony was taped but before it aired) defended the performance, noting that the show aired on CBS and ran on Paramount+ two days before Christmas. The 2024 edition also ran on Sunday, with the benefit of an NFL lead-in.
“Comparing this year’s broadcast ratings to prior years is a classic apples-to-oranges comparison and evidence of far-left bias,” Roma Daravi, vp of public relations for the Trump Kennedy Center, said in a statement shared with THR. “The program performed extremely well across key demographics and platforms, despite industry and timing disadvantages, including a Tuesday air date two days before Christmas.”
The Center has plenty of time to work on a new deal. The honorees are typically announced in the late summer, with the broadcast taping in December.
President Trump’s close involvement with the arts institution and the show itself is a wild card as the Center plots out a future media rights deal.
President Trump hosted the 2025 edition of the event himself (he implied he did it at the request of CBS), introducing the honorees, though it is not clear if he will host the show in future installments, or hand off that duty to someone else.
He was also closely involved in the selection of honorees, and there is a good chance he will be for future installments as well. He has also taken a personal interest in renovations and improvements to the building, posting a photo of “potential marble armrests” for the Center after Christmas.
Trump’s personal interest in the Center raises the possibility that he may get personally involved in discussions over the future of the TV broadcast, particularly given that he has met with a number of media executives in recent months, including Paramount’s David Ellison (and his father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison), Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, CNN chief Mark Thompson, and others.
Paramount, of course, owns CBS, while Netflix holds has the streaming rights to the Kennedy Center’s other big program: The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which was awarded to Conan O’Brien this year.
Netflix has a deal to acquire Warner Bros., and Paramount is also pursuing a bid. Both could face regulatory scrutiny and might find a deal for the show more appealing in that environment. Still other companies, like Versant or Fox, may be interested in cutting a deal knowing that they may want to pursue acquisitions in the future.
It could also go to a digital platform like X, which has been cutting deals for exclusive content, or YouTube.
As crazy as it sounds that media M&A could be a driver for the TV rights to a niche awards show, it has become surprisingly plausible in the current environment.
The Kennedy Center Honors have not traditionally been a major driver of revenue for the Center, with ticket sales for shows and concerts and federal funding the biggest draw according to tax records, but the Honors and Twain prize still generate millions of dollars in revenue, and Trump, who is intimately familiar with the art of the TV deal thanks to his years on The Apprentice, surely sees more value to be mined from it. And while the show itself may not be a major financial driver, the attention it commands is valuable for the Center’s overall programming.
The tax records indicate that the Honors brought in gross receipts of more than $8 million in fiscal year 2024. It is not clear how much of that came from the CBS rights fee. It also recorded receipts of $5.2 million from The Mark Twain Prize, which streams on Netflix.