Syndicated ‘Matter of Fact’ Renewed For Fall

Hearst Television’s weekly syndicated political magazine show Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien — of which O’Brien is host and producer — has been renewed for the 2017-18 TV season. The show enters the new season on what Hearst calls “the strength of substantial audience growth, boasting the largest audience among first-run weekend programs premiering in the past two years.”

Matter of Fact has rapidly expanded its reach to 85% coverage of the United States, adding major-market stations including WNBC New York and KNTV San Francisco. Its weekly audience —now averaging about 1 million viewers — has nearly tripled since its initial launch.

In the Hearst Television markets, Matter of Fact now consistently places among the top-three-rated broadcast Sunday morning newsmaker programs, ranking alongside NBC’s Meet the Press and CBS’s Face the Nation, and surpassing the ratings of every cable TV Sunday newsmaker show, according to Hearst.

“It’s no small feat to launch a successful new show in syndication,” said Emerson Coleman, VP of programming at Hearst Television, who is the show’s executive in charge of production. “But thanks to the show’s differentiated content as well as the determined work of our production team and the support of our station and distribution partners, we have in a very short period of time established the program as a significant new voice in the Sunday morning landscape.”

“For us, it is a priority to go beyond the headlines to report how policy impacts peoples’ daily lives,” said ‘Matter of Fact’ host Soledad O’Brien. “We do this through a combination of reporting from the field and long form in-studio interviews.”

Additionally, the show has shown substantial growth on partner stations in July 2017 “sweeps” ratings especially in the key adults 25-to-54 demographic.  On stations where the show was added in 2017 it improved upon the July 2016 ratings of previous shows in its timeslot as follows:

• WNBC, + 9%
• KNTV San Francisco, +33%
• WTTG Washington, +41%
• KDVR Denver, +108%
• WVIT Hartford-New Haven, +193%
• WBBM Chicago, where it launched in 2016, the show doubled its own July 2016 ratings.

In fall 2017 Matter of Fact will move to a new home in Indianapolis on WTHR; will debut on WTVF Nashville, on WRAL Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and on KPRC Houston.

Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien, produced by Hearst Television and distributed by Sony Pictures Television, enters the 2017-18 TV season on 126 stations, including ones in 28 of the top 30 markets.