UPDATED: President Donald Trump sat down on Sunday afternoon with Fox News for the president’s now-customary pre-Super Bowl interview. The segment with “O’Reilly Factor” host Bill O’Reilly, which aired during Fox Broadcasting’s pre-game coverage around 4 p.m., drew an average audience of 12.2 million viewers.
Here at last we have a true apples-to-apples comparison for a television event with Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama — or at least as close to one as we’re going to get for a while — and it’s not very flattering for the current Commander-in-Chief.
President Obama’s first pre-Super Bowl interview, with NBC’s Matt Lauer in 2009, brought in an average audience of 21.9 million viewers in Nielsen’s final accounting. The half-hour of 2011’s Super Bowl pre-game coverage — which included O’Reilly’s highly anticipated interview with Obama — attracted an average audience of 17.3 million. In 2016, Obama’s interview drew 14.9 million; in 2015, 16.4 million; in 2014, 18 million.
The Trump-O’Reilly interview drew a 7.8 household rating in Nielsen’s metered market overnight ratings. President Obama’s last three sit-downs before the Super Bowl drew overnight household ratings of 9.2, 10.2, and 11.5; his first, a 9.6.
There are a few factors that can perhaps affect the ratings of POTUS’ pre-Super Bowl interview: Current political climate, game anticipation, and how close to kickoff the interview aired (Obama’s first interview was shown closer to 5 p.m.; the 2011 one was around 4:30 p.m.). The last one could account for the gap between POTUS 44 and 45’s first interviews — the closer to kickoff, the more people are already tuned in to the network. However, a difference of 9.7 million viewers is significant.
This will twist TrumpleThinSkin’s panties. It was to be YUGE!
Oh, please don’t get him started with endless moronic tweets. He’s never understood ratings and he sure is not going to start now.
I’m so glad that his ultimate goal is not to be as popular as Obama was.
OK ratings comparisons, blah, blah, blah…
Why are people not talking about Trump being the first POTUS to admit America kills people?
This was a statement that I only thought I might hear if Bernie was POTUS, but instead it comes from the mouth of the left’s sworn enemy who are not seeing the opportunities this president is giving them.
One of Obama’s partying gifts to Trump was a pre approved Seal Team 6 attack that injured many and killed more, including women & children & one Navy Seal along with a purposeful destruction of a multi-million dollar aircraft in the middle of nowhere.
The news media spent about two seconds on reporting this.
Just imagine what the millions of dollars wasted on this event and many others like it could have done positively for so many others.
And to the the right wingers, – how can you be so against the killing of a fetus, but not blink an eye over the killing of women and children and soldiers.
We finally have a POTUS crazy enough to just maybe change the decades of status quo.
You make no sense and you change facts. I’d this Conaway posting?
If killing women and children is so bad, then why does our dictator not condemn Putin, who in concert with Iran and Syrian government have killed tens of thousands of innocents in Aleppo. Instead of agreeing that Putin is a killer, who says so are Americans! We didn’t shoot down the Malaysian airliner last year. We don’t kill anti. president reporters.
And your pro life rant? Unbelievable. In the name of God, you demand pro life laws. But, your pro life stance ends at the borders or once the child is born. The most restrictive states also have the least amount of assistance on their budgets. Those babies must be born, bit once they are. Forget about em. And I’m sure your God wouldn’t recognize borders.
These ratings are negative and, therefore, FAKE.
Donald tweets otherwise that his ratings were much huger than Obama’s so this must be true if the Czar-in-chief tweets it, right? Only good, winning news is real. Everything else is fake.
Of course. Kelly Anne Contrary said just recently that if the President says it, it’s true. (I’m not making this up. I wish I was.)