Political and pandemic preemptions sink most syndies

Review based on a national syndicated rating report for the week ending August 16, 2020.

Season and all-time low ratings abounded in the sleepy summer session ending August 16. In addition to newsbreaks on the coronavirus pandemic, reports on Joe Biden announcing U.S. Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate on August 11, and coverage of their first campaign appearance together on August 12 caused numerous preemptions. On top of that Fox blew out programming for Thursday night baseball on August 13.

Among talk shows, Dr. Phil (1.8 live plus same day national Nielsen rating, down 5%) was completely in reruns but still held up the best, finishing first in the category for the eighth time in nine weeks and 192^nd time in the past 206 tries.

Live with Kelly and Ryan (new season low 1.5, down 6%) was a respectable second.

Well behind the top two was third place Maury (1.0, unchanged), which was mired at its all-time low for a second consecutive week.

Ellen DeGeneres (new series low 0.9, down 10%) fell to the weakest rating in its 17-year history.

Steve Wilkos (0.9, unchanged) remained at its season low for the third week in a row, landing in a tie with “Ellen.”

At the other end of the Nielsen scale, severely preempted repeats of court show extraordinaire Judge Judy (new season low 5.2, down 4%) and encore episodes of fellow gaveler Hot Bench (1.9, down 5%) were the highest rated strips in daytime for a tenth straight week.

In access most magazines held their ground. Of note Daily Mail TV (0.8, steady) did well to tie TMZ (0.8, unchanged) for the second week in a row.