‘Morning Joe’ Viewership Drops 17% After Joe and Mika Meet With Trump

“Morning Joe” took a hit to its viewership Monday after hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski revealed that they had met with President-elect Donald Trump. The revelation was met with decidedly mixed reactions online, and in real time, over 100,000 viewers turned the channel before 8 a.m.

After starting off with 839,000 total viewers in the 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. hour on Monday morning, total viewership for “Morning Joe” dropped to 694,000 in the 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. time slot following the hosts’ explanation of their meeting, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day figures. The 17% drop off in viewership is pretty unusual from the 6 a.m. to 7 a.m., with viewership typically growing as bigger audiences tune in for their morning news.

Still, viewership grew in the final two hours of the broadcast compared to the 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. hour, with the 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. hour growing its audience to 775,000 viewers and most of that audience sticking around for the 9 a.m. to 1o a.m. hour, which brought in 770,000 viewers. From the first hour of the broadcast, “Morning Joe” saw a 8% audience decline into the last hour of the broadcast.

A similar trend can be seen in “Morning Joe” ratings in the key cable demo among adults 25-54, with the 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. hour bringing in 113,000 viewers in the demo before declining 38% to reach just 70,000 viewers in the demo for the 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. hour.

Ratings grew at 8 a.m. to reach 83,000 viewers in the demo for the next hour, before dropping slightly to 79,000 viewers in the demo for the 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. hour. That marks a 30% downtick in ratings from the broadcast’s first hour until its final hour.

The meeting between the MSNBC hosts and Trump aimed to “restart communications,” Brzezinski said on the Monday morning broadcast, adding “Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him.” The news was not received fondly by many viewers, and CNN reported Tuesday the hosts met with the president-elect because they were “credibly concerned that they could face governmental and legal harassment.”

It’s unknown whether this ratings decline will continue throughout the week and beyond to impact the morning show’s overall viewership. This story will be updated with viewership figures from Tuesday’s show when figures are made available.