Sunday’s “60 Minutes” wasn’t a hit in the ratings, but it could have been worse.
Last year, the season’s 2nd episode clocked in at around 6.4 million viewers. It was down 35% from the previous week because their premiere had 10 million viewers.
This past Sunday, the episode was around 6.4 million, down 18% from last week’s debacle.
So it’s on a par for second week shows, but it’s not good.
The whole show hinged on Ross Douthat’s interview with Patrick Clancy, whose ex wife killed their three children. Now he’s married to a fertility expert he met in a running club, and they’re expecting a new baby. Clancy also moved from suburban Boston to Manhattan.
It was all very strange. Douthat has a face for radio and a voice for silent films. He is as aesthetically unpleasing as I am, which is why I am not on a TV show. His voice is grating. The look is certainly not “Anchorman.” The piece was uncomplicated. It seemed all Douthat wanted to ask was, Did your wife apologize for killing your kids? How do you feel about it now?
Clancy was articulate, almost a little too calm, though God knows he might have been on Xanax. He doesn’t really know what happened, except that it did, and now he lives in Manhattan with a new wife. The interview and piece were substandard “6O Minutes,” half baked. That segment got a 6.8, and then the ratings rapidly declined.
The ratings depend entirely on the NFL game that precedes the show. The audience stays for the first segment, and then decides what to do next. In this case, they moved on.
