Face the Nation continued to average the most total viewers of any Sunday public affairs show, drawing an average of 2.8 million total viewers this past Sunday. ABC’s This Week finished second behind CBS in total viewers, averaging 2.34 million.
Three years ago this month, Margaret Brennan was named moderator of Face the Nation. The CBS public-affairs program is in a favorable spot, finishing 2020 with an average of a Sunday-best 3,598,000 million total viewers. The show tallied a whopping 4.5 million viewers on Jan. 10, as viewers looked for Brennan’s take on the Capitol invasion. She has had a front-row seat for the torrid pace at which the news cycle now moves. “It’s been such a whirlwind,” Brennan said. “I think it’s been 10 years of news packed into three years of moderating.”
CBS’s Sunday morning news show Face the Nation is on a two-week winning streak and has seen a major boost in viewers amid coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. “It’s been heartening to see the choices that we’re making are resonating,” says host Margaret Brennan.
Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan talks about the new CBS Washington, D.C. digs, the new studio that will serve as home to both Face the Nation and the CBS Evening News her desire to expand her show’s mission into digital and podcasting.
Exclusives
The CBS News senior foreign affairs correspondent will add moderator of the Sunday morning franchise beginning Feb. 25. She succeeds John Dickerson who moved to CBS This Morning last month to fill the seat formerly occupied by Charlie Rose.
CBS News correspondents are jockeying to replace John Dickerson as host of the Sunday morning show. CBS News chief congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes was first up in the informal competition to replace him. Next up is White House correspondent Margaret Brennan.
By the time even news junkies get to Sunday morning, there can be a plaintive need for a mental health break. There may be physiological limits on how many times they can watch Sen. Lindsey Graham, among others in our public life, in a given week. But the three stalwarts of broadcast television — ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation and NBC’s Meet the Press — endure amid the obvious media fragmentation and may have cause for a certain self-congratulation amid via a vaguely surprising Harvard study.
John Dickerson takes the helm Sunday as the ninth host of television’s six-decade-old, top-rated Sunday gabfest. He replaces folksy-yet-venerable Bob Schieffer, who anchored Face for 24 years, more than half of Dickerson’s life. Dickerson is the old gray network’s first digerati Sunday moderator, a wonk who lives on the Web and, at 46, is three decades younger than his predecessor.
The veteran newsman, who announced his retirement last month, had said only that he would be leaving this summer. But summer’s coming early for Schieffer, who wants to relax for the warm weather months while CBS gives his successor, John Dickerson, the chance to settle in before the presidential campaign begins in earnest, so his last day will be May 31.
CBS Political Director John Dickerson, a former Time magazine and Slate writer who has been with CBS since 2009, will begin his new role as moderator of Face the Nation early this summer. Schieffer, who made the announcement on Sunday’s show, noted that Dickerson “sure has the right bloodlines” for the assignment. Dickerson’s mother, Nancy, was the first female correspondent in the CBS News Washington bureau.
NBC’s Meet the Press accuses CBS of some trickery in the Nielsen ratings and in scheduling designed to make its Face the Nation seem more popular than it actually is. CBS detects the aroma of sour grapes. The incident is a vivid illustration of a newly competitive era on Sundays.
Hour-Long ‘Face The Nation’ Permanent
The trial expansion of CBS’s Face The Nation to a full hour is now official, CBS News President David Rhodes announced yesterday. The Sunday magazine show had been expanded from half-hour to an hour in the spring for a 20-week trial.
CBS News has launched Face to Face, a weekly webcast featuring original Face the Nation content, expanding the leading public affairs program’s online footprint. Each week, Face to Face will […]
Anchor Bob Schieffer announced on his half-hour Sunday political talk show that his broadcast will increase to an hour starting in April, putting it on equal footing with rivals Meet the Press on NBC and This Week on ABC.
Mary Hager has been named executive producer of Face the Nation, it was announced Friday by Christopher Isham, VP-CBS News Washington Bureau Chief, and Bob Schieffer, chief washington correspondent and […]
