{"id":379717,"date":"2025-12-31T12:04:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T12:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/379717\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T12:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T12:04:07","slug":"kennedy-center-honors-ratings-drop-following-trump-hosted-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/379717\/","title":{"rendered":"Kennedy Center Honors Ratings Drop Following Trump-Hosted Show"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe ratings for the 2025 Kennedy Center<\/a> Honors, hosted by Donald Trump, dropped to a new all-time low, with the telecast averaging 3.01 million viewers, according to Nielsen Live + Same Day Panel + Big Data. <\/p>\n

\n\tLast year\u2019s show averaged 4.1 million viewers, per Nielsen, meaning this year\u2019s honors dropped 26 percent in viewership year-on-year. However, Nielsen has changed its methodology since then, launching what it calls its \u201cBig Data + Panel\u201d system which combines its traditional panel data with data from smart TVs and set-top boxes.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis year\u2019s ceremony saw <\/a>Trump host, and the likes of Sylvester Stallone,\u00a0Kiss, Gloria Gaynor, Michael Crawford and George Strait honored. During the show, which was taped on Dec. 7, the president predicted that the broadcast would draw in the best ratings yet. He shared<\/a> a similar sentiment during an event held a day before the Honors were filmed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI believe \u2014 and I\u2019m gonna make a prediction \u2014 this will be the highest-rated show that they\u2019ve ever done, and they\u2019ve gotten some pretty good ratings, but there\u2019s nothing like what\u2019s gonna happen tomorrow night,\u201d Trump said. \u201cWe never had a president hosting the awards before. This is a first. I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll give me great reviews, right? You know, they\u2019ll say, \u2018He was horrible. He was terrible. It was a horrible situation.\u2019 No, we\u2019ll do fine. I\u2019ve watched some of the people that host. Jimmy Kimmel was horrible, and some of these people, if I can\u2019t beat out Jimmy Kimmel in terms of talent, then I don\u2019t think I should be president.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore the show aired on Dec. 23, Trump wrote<\/a> on Truth Social that he was named host of the Honors \u201cat the request of the Board, and just about everybody else in America.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTell me what you think of my \u2018Master of Ceremonies\u2019 abilities,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIf really good, would you like me to leave the Presidency in order to make \u2018hosting\u2019 a full time job?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tPreliminary ratings had viewership sitting at 2.65 million, though an insider predicted<\/a> that the final numbers would ultimately deliver a higher total.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe honors aired on CBS and Paramount+ amid news of Trump\u2019s plans to rename the Kennedy Center<\/a> to The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Kennedy Center Board of Trustees voted unanimously today to name the institution The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,\u201d the Kennedy Center\u2019s vice president of public relations, Roma Daravi, said in a statement<\/a> at the time. \u201cThe unanimous vote recognizes that the current Chairman saved the institution from financial ruin and physical destruction. The new Trump Kennedy Center reflects the unequivocal bipartisan support for America\u2019s cultural center for generations to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe decision has drawn much blowback, including by members of the Kennedy family. It also resulted in musician Chuck Redd dropping out<\/a> of a planned performance at the Kennedy Center on Christmas Eve. Redd told the Associated Press, \u201cWhen I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tSomewhat lost in the shuffle of this year\u2019s award show was the fact that CBS\u2019 deal to televise the event has now ended, meaning that the Center will be bringing the TV and streaming rights to market in the next few months.<\/p>\n

\n\tNormally those are numbers that would not draw many bidders, but this is no ordinary show. While it isn\u2019t clear if Trump intends to host the event again, the show will be another opportunity for a media company to do a deal with Trump, and there is no shortage of companies that could be willing to engage.<\/p>\n

\n\tCBS\u2019 window to renew the deal lapsed earlier this year, but that was a decision made by the previous ownership. It is entirely possible that Paramount CEO David Ellison is willing to ink a new deal to keep the show in-house. And then there is Netflix, which has the streaming rights to the Kennedy Center\u2019s other big program: The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which was awarded to Conan O\u2019Brien earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ratings for the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors, hosted by Donald Trump, dropped to a new all-time low,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,57186,51879],"class_list":["post-379717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-kennedy-center-honors","tag-kennedy-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}