NCS benefited from the “Trump bump” throughout President Donald Trump’s first administration, however ratings are down bigly the second time round as each the media landscape and the community have modified drastically.
An evaluation reveals NCS has misplaced greater than 40% of its complete day and primetime viewers from 2017 to 2025, the respective first years of the 2 Trump presidencies.
In 2015, NCS averaged 711,000 primetime viewers with a complete each day viewers of solely 489,000. That yr, Trump didn’t descend the escalator to announce his presidential run till mid-June, and he wasn’t taken significantly severely by the mainstream press for a lot of the yr.
By early 2016, because it turned clear that Trump had a reliable likelihood at turning into the Republican Party’s nominee, NCS and different media shops began to appreciate that the “Apprentice” star was a big ratings draw.
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NCS misplaced 45% of its primetime viewers and 44% of complete day viewers from President Donald Trump’s first yr in workplace in 2017 to 2025.
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NCS famously aired empty podiums at Trump occasions in anticipation of him talking with a view to hold viewers hooked. It carried his rallies dwell, typically taking warmth from the left for giving a lot consideration to the GOP nominee. The outcome was a large ratings bump that noticed NCS common 1.3 million primetime viewers and a complete day viewers of 752,000 in 2016.
NCS’s spike continued in 2017 throughout the first yr of Trump’s presidency, because the community embraced “resistance” programming and then-White House correspondent Jim Acosta emerged as a family title, usually feuding with Trump and members of the administration.
NCS’s primetime lineup averaged 1 million viewers, and the community managed a complete each day viewers of 775,000 regardless of being repeatedly being mocked as “fake news” by the president himself.
During that point, the time period “Trump bump” emerged within the cable information business and NCS. NCS’s end-of-year press release touted “a ratings milestone,” and Axios reported that Trump delivered a “ratings boom.”
Fast-forward to 2025 and NCS seems remarkably completely different. Primetime hosts Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo are lengthy gone, Acosta is now not with the community, and NCS has seen quite a lot of management adjustments.
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Former NCS President Jeff Zucker oversaw the community throughout the first Trump administration.
Then-NCS President Jeff Zucker, who oversaw the pivot from a just-the-facts information community to anti-Trump opinion programming, was forced out forward of a long-planned merger that put the community within the palms of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Zucker’s first successor, Chris Licht, tried to tamp down the partisanship to no avail, and was changed by Mark Thompson in 2023. NCS is on the market, once more, and solely Anderson Cooper stays from the 2017 primetime lineup.
The outcomes haven’t been fairly, and NCS’s present management has been unable to capitalize on the second Trump presidency.
In 2025, NCS’s primetime viewership plummeted to 573,000 and its complete day viewers was solely 432,000. From 2017 through 2025, NCS noticed 45% of its primetime viewers flee and misplaced 44% of complete day viewers.
NCS insiders insist the ratings debacle is a results of audiences consuming information on different platforms these days. Streaming audiences have grown considerably throughout the business, and a endless catalogue of political podcasts is accessible.
The share of U.S. households with out cable will increase annually, and roughly 80 million houses have reduce the wire, whereas roughly 54 million houses nonetheless pay for the service, based on Evoca. But the problems for NCS aren’t attributable to cord-cutting alone, as Fox News Channel grew 10% throughout primetime and 13% amongst complete day throughout the identical time interval. Along the best way, Fox News’ share of the cable information viewers grew from 47% in 2017 to 63% in 2025.
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NCS’s Jim Acosta was famously hostile in the direction of President Donald Trump’s first administration.
Fox News contributor Joe Concha mentioned NCS hemorrhaging viewers signifies the community has seen viewers tune out because it misplaced credibility with Americans.
“This shows that the networks that have cried wolf, or in this case, cried Trump, have gone to that well about one thousand times more than even many of their viewers can stand,” Concha instructed Fox News Digital.
Concha criticized NCS for giving what he referred to as slanted protection of quite a lot of matters since 2017, together with pushing the Russian collusion narrative whereas dismissing Hunter Biden’s laptop.
NCS’s 2025 additionally hit all-time lows among the many advertiser-coveted demographic of adults aged 25–54 in 2025, averaging solely 102,000 demo viewers throughout primetime and 70,000 all through the day.
NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck mentioned the media landscape has developed, and Trump’s critics now not have to depend on cable information.
“NCS and the artist formerly known as MSNBC were the go-to gathering places for The Resistance in the first Trump term,” Houck instructed Fox News Digital.
“Now, they’re part of a tableau from hell with podcasts like the wicked witches of ‘I’ve Had It,’ The Bulwark crowd conserving conservatism, MeidasTouch… resistance wine moms have a lot of options to consume their Trump hate and talking points,” Houck continued.
DePauw University professor and media analyst Jeffrey McCall feels the drastic decline in NCS’s viewers was probably attributable to a mixture of things.
“One key is that the establishment media and left-of-center voters were in deep denial when Trump first won the presidency in 2017. They couldn’t believe Hillary had actually lost, which led to the Russia collusion conspiracy theories and related reporting, and then eventually to impeachment. There was great hope at that time for the Trump ‘resistance,’ and those niche viewers couldn’t get enough of that coverage,” McCall instructed Fox News Digital.
McCall mentioned that “the resistance has not evaporated by any means,” however “there is less sense on the left that all-out resistance is needed or can even work,” on condition that Trump bounced again politically, and he cannot run for a 3rd time period.
“Even the ‘hair on fire’ rhetoric that Trump won’t leave the White House after this current term, and will maneuver into a third term, is getting no traction,” McCall mentioned.
Original article supply: NCS ratings down bigly from 2017 ‘Trump bump’ through 2025 amid changing media landscape