President Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center Honors hosting debut on Tuesday flopped badly.
Preliminary ratings data show CBS’s broadcast of the awards show attracted its smallest audience ever, according to Programming Insider.
The 48th Kennedy Center Honors averaged roughly 2.65 million viewers on Tuesday, falling far short of the 4.1 million who tuned in for the 2024 ceremony, the outlet reported—a decline of more than 35 percent.
Trump, the first president to host the awards, had boasted before the show that the center’s board and “just about everybody else in America” wanted him to serve as emcee for the evening.
He dubbed the event “THE TRUMP KENNEDY CENTER HONORS” after a board packed with Trump loyalists voted last week to add Trump’s name to the longstanding memorial to John F. Kennedy—a move which several members of the Kennedy family have railed against.
The former reality TV star even mused on Truth Social about abandoning the presidency for television, should audiences approve of his performance.
“Tell me what you think of my ‘Master of Ceremony’ abilities. If really good, would you like me to leave the presidency in order to make ‘hosting’ a full-time job?” he asked.
CBS aired the pre-taped ceremony without indulging Trump’s rebrand and trimmed his opening remarks from roughly 12 minutes to about two minutes.
The network cut out some of his freewheeling asides—including his crack at the laughing crowd as “horrible people.”
“If there is one thread that connects all of these amazing artists together, it is the word ‘persistence,’” Trump said. “I know so many of you, and you are persistent. Many of you are miserable, horrible people. But you are persistent, you never give up. Sometimes I wish you’d give up, but you don’t.”
Ratings for Kennedy Center Honors broadcasts have been on the decline, with 2024’s 4.1 million viewers already a record low, according to Vulture’s Josef Adalian, who noted that 5.2 million viewers tuned in in 2022.
Adalian said Tuesday’s broadcast performed even more poorly among “demos”—advertisers’ most valued age group—coming in at roughly half of 2024’s ratings. He called the numbers a “massacre.”
Data is wonky right now with Nielsen’s new “big data” panel. But in prelims, KenCen did just 2.65M. Even with a 25% lift, the show still finishes in the mid-3M range– well below last year. In demos, it’s even more of a massacre– currently at a 0.14, roughly HALF of 2024 show
— TVMoJoe (@TVMoJoe) December 24, 2025
The 2025 awards show, which was held on Dec. 7, celebrated songwriter George Strait, actors Michael Crawford and Sylvester Stallone, singer Gloria Gaynor, and the rock band KISS.
The honorees were picked by the Kennedy Center board, which Trump hijacked in February when he fired its existing members and installed himself as chair.
The 2024 Kennedy Center Honors, which took place under President Joe Biden, honored The Godfather filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the rock band the Grateful Dead, singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt, jazz musician Arturo Sandoval, and the Apollo, a New York City arts institution.
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