Bari Weiss’s Critics Shred ‘Dismal’ 60 Minutes Ratings, While Defenders Trumpet a Ratings Bump. So Who’s Right?

Credit: CBS News and Sipa via AP Images

The second episode of 60 Minutes under CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is already fueling another media-world fight over the show’s ratings — with her critics calling the numbers “dismal” and her defenders pointing to a year-over-year bump.

So who’s right? Well, while 60 Minutes is certainly seeing overall declines from years past, both sides have numbers to back them up. They’re just comparing them to very different things.

Sunday’s episode averaged 6.77 million viewers and 1.083 million adults 25-54, according to final Nielsen Big Data + Panel ratings. That put 60 Minutes down 15% in total viewers and 31% in the demo from its season premiere.

Compared to the second episode of last season, however, total viewership was up 5%, while viewership among adults 25-54 jumped 18%. Both were the largest year-over-year increases for a second episode of 60 Minutes since 2017, according to Nielsen data.

But Sunday’s show also marked the third consecutive season in which the show’s second episode drew fewer than 7 million viewers. The show’s second episode in years past drew audiences more than twice that size. Nielsen data shows the comparable episode averaged 16.9 million viewers in 2001 and remained above 10 million as recently as 2016.

The quarter-hour numbers also showed the audience declining throughout the broadcast, bottoming out in the final 15 minutes at 6.3 million total viewers and 956,000 adults 25-54.

And those numbers came despite a major interview with Patrick Clancy, whose ex-wife, Lindsay Clancy, admitted to killing their three young children. Her time in court, during which her lawyers made the case that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, ended in a mistrial earlier this month.

The Daily Beast seized on the preliminary week-over-week decline, declaring that Weiss, a “MAGA-Curious CBS Boss,” had been “Burned by ’60 Minutes’ Ratings Blow” and describing the show’s premiere a week earlier as “dismal.” It also noted that based on initial data, 60 Minutes was beaten in the 25-54 demo Sunday night by Fox’s Best Medicine and CBS’s Big Brother.

But the New York Post found a much rosier comparison, also relying on Nielsen’s preliminary data.

In those numbers, Sunday’s roughly 6.5 million viewers were slightly more than the 6.454 million who watched the second episode last season. More notably, the approximately 1.1 million viewers in the demo represented a roughly 20% increase from the 917,000 who watched the second episode a year ago.

The Post initially went so far as to headline its report, “60 Minutes’ ratings surge as blockbuster Patrick Clancy interview brings back audiences,” before changing it to the more restrained, “60 Minutes’ ratings rise with boost from blockbuster Patrick Clancy interview.”

Puck’s Dylan Byers, who has emerged as a prominent defender of Weiss amid the scrutiny surrounding her overhaul of CBS News, shared the Post report on X with a succinct reaction: “How about that.”

Byers had already pushed back last week against what he called the television news industry’s “dark bloodlust” for Weiss following the weak 60 Minutes premiere, arguing that the show’s ratings were being affected by factors including its NFL lead-in and changes to Nielsen’s methodology.

Guardian media reporter Jeremy Barr quickly poured cold water on Byers’s victory lap, though.

According to final Nielsen data, Sunday’s show was actually the third-lowest since 2001.

There’s another wrinkle that helps explain how both camps arrived at such different conclusions.

Last season’s premiere drew 10.026 million viewers before falling 36% to 6.455 million for episode two, meaning the show retained about 64% of its premiere audience. This season began much lower, with 7.935 million viewers, but fell just 15% to 6.77 million for episode two, retaining about 85% of its premiere audience.

And unlike this year’s premiere, which benefited from an 18.4 million-viewer national NFL lead-in, Sunday’s broadcast followed a single-header that varied by market. The Beast previously reported, citing a television executive, that viewership for the NFL game before this season’s premiere was itself down 22%.

So the dueling headlines aren’t the result of dueling data. Compared with last week’s premiere, 60 Minutes took a sizable hit. Compared with the equivalent episode last year, it posted a modest gain in total viewers and a considerably larger one in the demo.

And in historical terms, 6o Minutes continues to see major drops in viewership, with 6.77 million viewers putting the episode near the bottom of the show’s second-week performances over the past quarter-century.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!