Kennedy Center Honors hosted by Trump tanks in ratings with 35% fewer viewers than last year: report
President Donald Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center Honors show saw ratings for the annual event tank with 35 percent fewer viewers than last year, according to a report.
Trump became the first president to host the awards that aired Tuesday night after he boasted that the venue’s board and “just about everybody else in America” had requested he take center stage.
But according to preliminary Nielsen data, the televised awards show on CBS “drew its smallest ever audience on December 23, averaging an estimated 2.65 million viewers,” Programming Insider reports. “To put that in perspective: the 2024 broadcast averaged 4.1 million,” the media ratings website noted.
Trump’s opening remarks from the event that happened on December 7, which lasted 12 minutes, were cut by CBS to two minutes for viewers watching at home, according to The Washington Post.
The president touted the event on Truth Social Tuesday morning and billed it as “THE TRUMP KENNEDY CENTER HONORS” after a board voted last week to rename the iconic Washington memorial and performing arts center after Trump.
Leadership at CBS News reportedly instructed staffers to refer to the event’s original name, not the “Trump Kennedy Center Honors.”
In an email to staffers, obtained by the Post, CBS leadership said the network would continue to refer to the event and building as the “Kennedy Center” because the change would require Congressional approval.
“If the president or other administration officials use the new name in a soundbite, that is their prerogative,” the email reportedly said.
Another note to staffers reportedly followed that read: “We should NOT be calling it Trump Kennedy Center, or the Trump Kennedy Center Honors, unless quoting from those who don’t realize an official name change only comes from Congress.”
The move to rename the venue, a decision that was voted on by a board handpicked by Trump, was not a legal one, according to critics.
“Under current law, there I think is very little question that the Kennedy Center board cannot rename the Opera House after Melania Trump or pretty much anybody else and would need Congress’s permission for anything like that,” David Super, a Georgetown law professor, told the Post earlier this year, as Congress was mulling renaming the center for the president or the first lady. “… That statute is pretty unequivocal, and I can’t really find any loopholes in it.”
Relatives of Kennedy sharply criticized the decision to rename the center.
Maria Shriver, Kennedy’s niece, wrote on X that the decision left her “speechless, and enraged, and in a state of disbelief.”
Jack Schlossberg, the late president’s grandson, claimed the decision to rename the center was motivated by his ongoing campaign for Congress in New York.
“Our campaign represents everything Trump can’t stand or defeat,” Schlossberg wrote on X.
