David Muir of ABC News was the top-rated nightly news host for the 2023-24 season on community tv, AdWeek reported on Tuesday. Alas, it was a Pyrrhic victory for the World News Tonight host, who stays mired in controversy after his shockingly partisan efficiency at the Sept. 10 debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
World News Tonight led all networks this season with a median of seven.72 million viewers, together with simply 1.07 million, or 14 p.c (!), between the ages of 25 and 54, the solely demographic that issues to advertisers. Those numbers had been ok to greatest the “competition” at CBS and NBC, however they're nonetheless considerably diminished in contrast with earlier years.
Muir's common complete viewership in 2023-24 was down 5 p.c (383,000) in contrast with last season and down a whopping 12 p.c (1.02 million) from 2020-21, the yr Trump left workplace. The decline was even worse in the 25-54 age group. Muir's common viewership in the coveted demographic fell 17 p.c (218,000) in contrast with 2022-23. It was down 27 p.c (398,000) from 2021-22 and a staggering 37 p.c (618,000) from 2020-21.
Viewed in this context, Muir's rankings “win” merely confirms that each one nightly news applications are however shadows of their former selves, desperately clinging to relevance in a dying industry as their aged viewers actually dies off. It could be unhappy if it had been taking place to anybody else. But it is taking place to journalists and their company overlords, so it is nonetheless unhappy but in addition type of humorous.
ABC News praised Muir for internet hosting “America's No. 1 evening newscast.” Why would not they? The Disney-owned community pays him what's believed to be an eight-figure annual wage to learn a teleprompter to an viewers of senior residents who battle with mobility and are sometimes incapable of fixing the channel. Many of them are tuning in as a result of their residence well being aides need to ensure they're arrange with their pudding trays in time for Jeopardy! at 7 p.m. (and remember Wheel of Fortune at 7:30).
Even lesser-rated journalists are weirdly invested in portraying Muir as a juggernaut of mainstream media. It's actually true that he has considered one of the greatest physiques, courtesy of the Equinox luxurious health membership the place he spends most of his time. Muir had additionally sculpted and toned his status as an unbiased news drone, solely to reveal his true partisan colours throughout the debate by treating Harris with child gloves and pestering Trump with doubtful “fact checks.”
Last week, when Fox News reported that Muir's rankings dropped by 12 p.c in the days following the Sept. 10 debate, the industry's most infamous partisan sycophants rallied to his protection. Brian Stelter (at present and previously of CNN) and Puck‘s Dylan Byers (previously however not at present of CNN) tried to debunk Fox's (correct) report by selling an ABC News press launch insisting the rankings for the Sept. 16 airing of World News Tonight was 9 p.c bigger in contrast with “the same period a year ago,” as Deadline phrased it. What interval? That wasn't clear, however networks usually use obscure language to tout viewership numbers which are famously straightforward to spin in one's favor. “Like a Roman augur reading entrails,” an industry supply tells us.
The website TV Ratings Guide, which tracks and analyzes community rankings, dismissed the ABC News spin, primarily based on the purported rankings from a single broadcast, as “a flimsy argument.” But it was strong sufficient for Byers, the job-hopping former Politico scribe greatest identified for his subservient defense of George Stephanopoulos in 2015 after the Washington Free Beacon uncovered the ABC News anchor's donations to the Clinton Foundation.
Byers's reporting in Puck appeared to indicate that Muir's chiseled physique was the bodily manifestation of Godlike knowledge. “Muir drew his best ratings in five weeks,” Byers wrote with unflappable credulity. The declare, drawn from the ABC News press release, quantities to a meaningless boast provided that community rankings have traditionally declined throughout the August trip season. There was “no real merit to the argument,” Byers huffed, that Muir's partisan outbursts at the debate had brought on the chiseled host's ranking to fall even additional than they already had in current years.
Some industry observers predicted Muir's rankings would undergo after his partisan conduct at the debate as a result of the identical factor occurred to Lester Holt of NBC News in 2016. Like Muir, Holt had cultivated a status for goal reporting earlier than moderating a debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton, generally referred to as “Crooked.” Holt revealed his partisan bias throughout the debate, pestering Trump with so-called reality checks about New York City's racially charged “stop and frisk” police techniques, amongst different points. Holt doubled down throughout a 2017 interview with Trump in which he badgered the president about his marketing campaign's alleged “collusion” with Russia.
Viewers took discover, and altered the channel. The rankings for Holt's Nightly News program by no means recovered, and in May 2018, Muir surpassed his NBC News counterpart as the highest-rated nightly news host on tv. An industry supply tells us these applications are particularly delicate to even the slightest drop in rankings due to the outdated age and sedentary nature of the viewing viewers. “Once you lose viewers, once the channel is changed, they never come back,” the supply says.
Muir's rankings controversy comes as ABC News is beneath rising stress to conclusively refute the allegations of an nameless “whistleblower” who allegedly revealed in a sworn affidavit that the community colluded with Harris by sharing the debate questions in advance. Last week, ABC News initially declined to deal with the particular allegations outlined in the doc, which has not been verified. An nameless community spokesperson subsequently advised the Daily Beast that Harris was “absolutely not … given any questions before the debate.”
Muir was compelled to defend himself final week throughout a hard-hitting look on an ABC sister program, LIVE with Kelly and Mark, hosted by oversexed cleaning soap opera veterans Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos. “I believe it was our duty to ask [about] the issues that Americans care about,” Muir mentioned whereas sporting a T-shirt beneath a blazer with denims and ugly fight boots. “All of the noise that you hear afterward, about, you know, ‘Which candidate won the debate, did the moderators win or lose,' that's just noise.”
Before exposing his true self throughout the debate, Muir was greatest identified for touring the world in a tight-fitting black shirt, flaunting his chiseled biceps in catastrophe zones subsequent to youngsters affected by malnutrition, and posting the pictures of himself on Instagram.
