The Friday afternoon “news dump” found itself chock-full of breaking stories by the New York Times, the Washington Post and McClatchy DC about the investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump’s administration and Russia. And this was just a few hours’ worth of reporting, published on a single day, in a week that has proven to be one of the White House’s most troublesome since Trump took office in January. So it’s no wonder that The Daily Show with Trevor Noah scored its best weekly ratings since the Jon Stewart-less program premiered in 2015.
According to Variety, Noah’s Daily Show garnered an average of 1.05 million total viewers per episode this week. Before achieving this, the program’s highest rated week of episodes came during Noah’s premiere week in September 2015, which nabbed 1.02 million total viewers per episode. The Comedy Central flagship also jumped 36 percent year-over-year in total viewers and 18 percent in the key 18-49 demographic. Which, sans Nielsen-ese, means The Daily Show with Trevor Noah just had its best quarter ever.
While Variety cannot say with absolute certainty that Trump’s increasingly bad week deserves all the credit, the correlation isn’t too surprising. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert recently nabbed its best ratings since its 2015 premiere thanks in large part to the #FireColbert controversy, which was sparked by a comment Colbert made about Trump and Vladimir Putin that irked conservative viewers. Trump himself waded into the media firestorm, sparking followups from Colbert and, unsurprisingly, more viewers for The Late Show.
Let’s not forget the daily White House Press Briefings which, although Press Secretary Sean Spicer probably won’t be leading them as regularly in the near future, have earn some of its highest ratings ever. One report even credited this fact as being one of the biggest reasons why Trump keeps Spicer around.
(Via Variety)
