It may seem hard to believe but minus the first week where he had an interview with President Obama, Chuck Todd’s ratings on Meet The Press are worse than David Gregory’s.
The ratings for week three of the Chuck Todd Meet The Press experiment are in, and they are not good. For the entire television season Meet The Press averaged 2.72 million viewers, but Chuck Todd’s third week on saw 2.416 million viewers watch. On Todd’s second week, the show had 2.589 million viewers. Things are getting worse with each passing week for Meet The Press.
The general problem is that Chuck Todd isn’t very different from David Gregory. Todd did win the ratings race in his debut week, but that was because he had an exclusive interview with President Obama. In the following weeks, it has been a return to overall dullness for Meet The Press. The Sunday shows have been obsessed with Obama and ISIS for more than a month to the point where the shows have turned into weekly non-paid commercials for the Republican position of putting boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria.
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NBC was right to Gregory, because Disinterested David was never right for the show. Gregory was content with repeating Republican talking points and not challenging guests. Chuck Todd loves politics, but the changes that have been made to Meet The Press so far seem gimmicky and desperate. The unveiling of a weekly poll from Republican tilting pollster Marist feels like a desperate attempt to make news instead of reporting it.
All of the people who suggested that replacing Gregory with Todd would have no impact are right so far. Meet The Press needed a real shakeup, not a new face from the same stable. It has been a long time since Meet The Press was appointment viewing. Chuck Todd hasn’t made things better. In fact, he might be making them worse.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
