The Kennedy Center defended the Donald-Trump hosted 2025 Kennedy Center Honors‘ ratings performance despite the ceremony hitting an all-time low, calling comparison to past years’ broadcasts “evidence of far-left bias.”
“Comparing this year’s broadcast ratings to prior years is a classic apples-to-oranges comparison and evidence of far-left bias,” Kennedy Center VP of public relations Roma Daravi said in a statement to media. “The program performed extremely well across key demographics and platforms, despite industry and timing disadvantages, including a Tuesday air date two days before Christmas.”
Daravi’s comments come days after final ratings for the 2025 ceremony, which was televised on Tuesday, Dec. 23, put the show at a viewership of 3.01 million as it broadcast on CBS and live streamed on Paramount+, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day big data plus panel figures. The final viewership cemented what ratings suggested would be the Kennedy Center Honors’ lowest audience to date, sinking below the 4.1 million viewers brought in for the 2024 ceremony, which at the time marked an all-time low for the event.
While the 2024 Kennedy Center Honors benefitted from an NFL-lead in and Sunday night broadcast on Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024, the year prior scored a bigger audience despite being televised on a weeknight, with the 2023 ceremony scoring 4.5 million viewers as it debuted on Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023. The 2022 ceremony also took place on a weeknight around Christmastime.
“With overall television usage down roughly 20 percent year over year, the broadcast still tied for the #1 spot among adults aged 25–54, alongside a live NBA doubleheader,” the statement continued. “And on social media, Honors garnered 1.5 billion impressions in just one night — up from only 50 million similar impressions last year. This was a successful night celebrating the outstanding achievements of our Honorees at the Trump Kennedy Center.”
While declining linear viewership has been a hurdle for most major award ceremonies in recent years, 2025 saw several major awards shows see a year-over-year uptick in viewership, including the Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, Tonys and VMAs, some of which were boosted by adding a streaming arm to the ceremony. The VMAs scored a six-year viewership high as it simulcast on CBS for the first time while the Oscars brought in the biggest audience the awards show has seen in five years with 19.7 million viewers across ABC and Hulu.
While the Kennedy Center Honors hasn’t switched up its broadcast home of CBS since its debut in 1978, the ceremony has leveraged Paramount’s streaming arm of Paramount+ in recent years, even switching from the ceremony being available to watch for premium subscribers live and essential-tier customers having access to the stream the next day to a livestream on Paramount+, meaning that even essential-tier viewers could live stream the show on the streamer in both 2024 and 2025.
A large portion of the ratings plummet can be explained by the boycott of the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors from a a strong contingent of potential viewers outraged surrounding President Trump’s renaming of the the Kennedy Center, formerly the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, to the “Trump-Kennedy Center,” that was announced by press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Dec. 18, months after Trump took over as the venue’s chairman.
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