Commentary

Kennedy Center And Trump: Maybe TV Ratings Aren't His Specialty

by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, January 5, 2026

Kennedy Center Honors on CBS averaged 3.0 million viewers, down 27% from a year ago (4.1 million) -- an event that was hosted, for the first time, by U.S. president Donald Trump.

And with all the positive feelings about his role -- as well as also adding his name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts -- now called The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts -- the President made a bold prediction twice before the CBS TV event.

“I believe — and I’m gonna make a prediction — this will be the highest-rated show that they’ve ever done, and they’ve gotten some pretty good ratings, but there’s nothing like what’s gonna happen tomorrow night,” said Trump a day before the event.

This is bad news on two accounts. Not just the big dip versus a year ago, but that Nielsen changed its measurement to Nielsen Big Data + Panel, which adds in millions of homes with cable/satellite TV set top box and smart TVs sets -- some 45 million homes added to its panel of 42,000 homes.

To date all this has pushed up live events and sports as well as smaller, niche programming -- generally by 5% to 10%, according to analysts.

Not only did it not deliver the “highest-rated” show for the series ever, it did not come close to the actual highest --- 9.25 million Nielsen-measured viewers in 2014.

Then again, this is old news -- when it comes to TV shows Trump has been associated with..

Last year, former NBCUniversal Chief Marketing Officer John Miller, commenting to CNN on a piece he wrote in the U.S. News and World Report, that Trump kept lying about “The Apprentice”, a show he was on.

Trump continued to say it was the number one show in America. It was never the number one show in America.

Hmmm... maybe Trump was counting on the updated Nielsen system to deliver him better news?

So what happens next year -- and in 2027 and 2028? Will things change? Will the FCC get involved?

If Trump really want higher ratings, he needs better promotion. He should forget about an interview on Fox News Channel. Why not merge some of the biggest TV and Trump-related stories together of a recent period?

The easy way is for Trump to get a guest spot on Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert’s late-night shows. Yes, that’s crazy.

But isn’t this all about a higher viewership/profile for a president whose approval ratings is perhaps the lowest ever for a President?

Would Kimmel or Colbert make his overall numbers higher? Sure, just call it a “The Donald Trump Toast... & Roast”. (Winky emoji goes here).

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3 comments about "Kennedy Center And Trump: Maybe TV Ratings Aren't His Specialty".

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Larry Grossman from Media Encounters, January 5, 2026 at 3:56 p.m.
Everyone except tRump and his lackeys knows he "jumped the shark." If he wants ratings he should have the shark come back and eat him! ;-)
Reply

John Grono from GAP Research, January 9, 2026 at 5:33 p.m.

Hi Wayne.

I just have a curious question about how Nielsen's "panel of 42,000 homes" and Nielsen's "adds in millions of homes with cable/satellite TV set top box and smart TVs sets" are merged together.

I fully understand the 42k homes (ex. Nielsen AU and on the OzTAM monthly meetings for many years) on how they know what every 15 seconds was being watched in the home but not necessarily which people in the home were watching. Conveserly, how do they meld the STB and STV data in when the HH size and people are known.

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, January 10, 2026 at 9:45 a.m.

John, the 42,000 people meter panel is, Ibelieve, a combination of about 27,000 actual people meter homes with about 15,000 meter-only homes drawn from Nielsen's local market rating panels. So right away, there are internal weighting questions. As for how they handle the melding of STB and smart set data I din't know, nor can I explain what they do when a home has two kinds of sets--"smart" and "dumb" ones. I assume that both kinds are tracked.

One thing that I do know is this. Nielsen does not know if anyone is in the room and watching at any given point in time. The people meter was never capable of obtaining such information with any degree of credibility. Instructions are given, prompts flash on the screen urging micro-cooperation, but most of the time the panelists ignore them--it's simply asking too much of them. Who is going to press their button on and off every time they leave the room or aren't paying attention, then press it again when they return or resume "watching"? Answer: nobody.

I cover all of this and much more in my new book about TV, "TV Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow", which will be published shortly.