As ‘Meet the Press’ struggles in the ratings, plenty of questions for host David Gregory

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If “Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory were a guest on his own show, he knows the kinds of questions he’d be asked.

Why have your ratings been falling? Is the show in trouble? Is your job in trouble?

During the first three months of 2014, the NBC program finished behind perennial rivals “Face the Nation” on CBS and “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on ABC, despite being helped by two weeks of Winter Olympics hoopla. In the final quarter of 2013, viewing among people ages 25 to 54, the preferred group for TV news advertisers, fell to its lowest level ever.

The good news for all these news shows is that they remain among the most durable on TV, if perhaps less influential than they once were. Even as everything else on TV has lost viewers over time, the Big Three have held steady and even gained viewers. Collectively, about 9.6 million people watched them each week during the first three months of 2014, about the same number that watched Russert in 2005. This doesn’t count the audience for innumerable Sunday-morning competitors, from Fox News Sunday (hosted by former “Meet the Press” moderator Chris Wallace) to “Al Punto” on Univision. The shows can occasionally make news, too, if the interview subject is big enough.


As ‘Meet the Press’ struggles in the ratings, plenty of questions for host David Gregory