Millions of elite viewers still tune into the Sunday-morning talk shows, watching top Trump administration officials spin and spar.
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.
Even in the digital era, the Sunday morning news shows are an important way for candidates to spread their messages in election years. Ratings usually dip in non-election years, but with Donald Trump in the White House that could change. The sound bites pepper social media for days. Analyst Andrew Tyndall talks about which shows are doing it best, why hosts matter, and how ratings will hold up.
Journalists were in a state of shock a day after Sean Spicer, the press secretary, employed a combative tone and false statements in his first appearance on the White House podium.
Jake Tapper starts hosting CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. It airs at 9 a.m. ET and is repeated three hours later. He replaces Candy Crowley. He says he hopes to attract viewers who want a little more depth to their political interviews.
Exclusives
With the 2016 election season already in full swing, the Sunday morning ritual of listening to people shout over each other about politics will be a little more diverse, if the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda gets its way.
Five Myths About The Sunday Talk Shows
This weekend, Chuck Todd of NBC News officially joins the ranks of journalists assigned to host the venerable Sunday-morning network news programs. Though often derided as wonky and formulaic, these shows retain value — journalistic and financial — in a fractured media world. So let’s dispel some common misconceptions about them. If it’s Sunday, it’s “Five Myths.”
Detractors suggest the Sunday morning talk shows, which once provided the last word on national affairs, now merely add to a growing cacophony buttressed by social media and cable networks. “The competition to these talk shows has gotten much greater,” says Len Downie, the former Washington Post executive editor who is a media professor at Arizona State University. With all that available, Downie says, “I think the shows have become relatively predictable.”
