It seems there’s no such thing as bad publicity for those in the morning television genre: NBC’s “Today” show shot up a whopping 43 percent with last week’s announcement of Matt Lauer’s ousting.
From Tuesday to Wednesday, the No. 1 morning show in the valuable 18-49 and 25-54 demographics grew 43.2 percent among both age ranges, according to Nielsen.
All told, “Today” expanded its overall audience by 36.4 percent total viewers, day over day.
For those who have some sort of weird loyalty to specific days of the week, we can also compare that fateful “Today” episode to the prior Wednesday’s. Here’s the problem with that, however: the November 22 show was coded as a special due to its proximity to the Thanksgiving holiday.
Still, the numbers are pretty much right in line with what we’ve already seen. Week over week, the 7 a.m. Wednesday hour rose 41 percent overall. It was up 44 percent among adults 25-54, which is technically the very main demo for news programming.
Suffice it to say, “Today” won last week in the morning-show ratings wars — and handily. In case you have avoided all the news in 2017, Lauer was let go about a colleague reported him for “inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.” Additional accusations have mounted since that first one, which stemmed back to NBC’s Sochi Olympics coverage in 2014.
Lauer has apologized, without agreeing to the facts of specific allegations.