Without a lead in from an NFL game, “60 Minutes” sputtered on Sunday.
According to Nielsen, Sunday’s episode averaged 6.061 million total viewers and 767,000 viewers in the coveted Adults 25-54 demographic. That was down 41 percent in total viewers and 62 percent in the demo from last week’s episode, which benefited from the wild Kansas City Chiefs game.
The numbers show a 12% decline from last year’s fourth episode.
CBS did not promote the show in a conventional way. They waited til the last minute to give individual promos to two of the segments. The third remained a mystery til airtime.
The first segment was another Norah O’Donnell celebration of the Trump administration, a press release for the Secret Service.
The third segment was a profile of musician Jon Batiste that was pretty much the same as one CBS Sunday Mornings did four years ago, and the second in a short time following Gayle King’s piece on Batiste on CBS Mornings. They sure love Jon Batiste!
But the headlines have come from Lesley Stahl’s story from Israel about West Bank thugs terrorizing Palestinian home owners. It was a story presented in sheep’s clothing, as it was pitched about Israelis using sheep to help preserve settlements.
Stahl did a great job, but later it came out that she fought tooth and nail with CBS News chief Bari Weiss to get it on the air, and almost resigned.
The core “60 Minutes” audience smells a rat, and they’re tuning out in protest.
What will happen this week? The Chiefs are back at 4:25pm vs the LA Chargers, and the Buffalo Bills take on the Las Vegas Raiders. CBS is hoping for nail-biters that go long and feed right into the newsmagazine. God forbid the games are fast, or total blowouts.
