The Kennedy Middle Honors rankings point out a drop in viewership this 12 months, with the 2025 telecast averaging 3.01 million viewers, based on a Nielsen report CBS shared with The Washington Put up.
One 12 months earlier, the 2024 Kennedy Middle Honors reached an all-time rankings low of 4.1 million viewers. In complete, the 2025 present decreased in viewership by 26 %.
This 12 months’s ceremony was hosted by President Donald Trump, the place Sylvester Stallone, Kiss, Gloria Gaynor, Michael Crawford and George Strait we honored. In the course of the present, which was taped on Dec. 7, the president predicted that the printed would attract the very best rankings but. He shared an analogous sentiment throughout an occasion held a day earlier than the Honors had been filmed.
“I imagine — and I’m gonna make a prediction — this would be the highest-rated present that they’ve ever finished, and so they’ve gotten some fairly good rankings, however there’s nothing like what’s gonna occur tomorrow evening,” Trump mentioned. “We by no means had a president internet hosting the awards earlier than. This can be a first. I’m positive they’ll give me nice opinions, proper? You understand, they’ll say, ‘He was horrible. He was horrible. It was a horrible state of affairs.’ No, we’ll do high-quality. I’ve watched a number of the those that host. Jimmy Kimmel was horrible, and a few of these folks, if I can’t beat out Jimmy Kimmel when it comes to expertise, then I don’t assume I must be president.”
Earlier than the present aired on Dec. 23, Trump wrote on Fact Social that he was named host of the Honors “on the request of the Board, and nearly everyone else in America.”
“Inform me what you consider my ‘Grasp of Ceremonies’ skills,” he wrote. “If actually good, would you want me to go away the Presidency with a purpose to make ‘internet hosting’ a full time job?”
Preliminary rankings had viewership sitting at 2.65 million, although an insider predicted that the ultimate numbers would in the end ship a better complete.
The honors aired on CBS and Paramount+ amid information of Trump’s plans to rename the Kennedy Middle to The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Middle for the Performing Arts.
“The Kennedy Middle Board of Trustees voted unanimously at the moment to call the establishment The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Middle for the Performing Arts,” the Kennedy Middle’s vp of public relations, Roma Daravi, mentioned in a assertion on the time. “The unanimous vote acknowledges that the present Chairman saved the establishment from monetary destroy and bodily destruction. The brand new Trump Kennedy Middle displays the unequivocal bipartisan assist for America’s cultural middle for generations to come back.”
The choice has drawn a lot blowback, together with by members of the Kennedy household. It additionally resulted in musician Chuck Redd dropping out of a deliberate efficiency on the Kennedy Middle on Christmas Eve. Redd instructed the Related Press, “After I noticed the identify change on the Kennedy Middle web site after which hours afterward the constructing, I selected to cancel our live performance.”