Topline
An hour-long interview with the widow of political commentator Charlie Kirk on CBS criticized for its editorial approach drove away big advertisers without drawing a hoped-for big audience in what could be a defining moment for Bari Weiss, the newly appointed editor in chief of CBS News.
Erika Kirk, right, during a town hall moderated by Bari Weiss, CBS News’ editor-in-chief.
CBS via Getty Images
Key Facts
Weiss on Saturday moderated the town-hall style interview with Erika Kirk that touched on political polarization, antisemitism and her Christian faith, but has faced criticism for a relatively fawning approach.
The program was a major departure from usual broadcast news norms, with Weiss hosting (news executives don’t often put themselves in front of the camera) and in its format: CBS doesn’t generally give over prime time to its news division, much less for town halls on trending topics.
The much-hyped event—CBS rolled out excerpts of the interview for days across social platforms—saw 1.9 million viewers tune in live, according to Nielsen Panel + Big Data shared by CBS (up from 1.5 million in initial reports).
Those ratings outpace CBS’ season-to-date performance in the Saturday 8 p.m. slot time period by 32%, the network said, but is still below the channel’s primetime average for the week of Dec. 1 to Dec. 7, the latest weekly Nielsen data shows.
By comparison, 1.1 million viewers tuned in to the same time slot on Dec. 6 (the animated holiday special “Reindeer in Here”) and 1.4 million watched on Nov. 29 (“NCIS: Origins”).
More significantly, big-name advertisers who usually buy primetime spots on CBS—like Amazon and Procter & Gamble—were absent during the Kirk town hall, Variety first reported, and instead so-called direct-response advertisers that pay much less like SuperBeets, a dietary supplement, and home-repair service HomeServe.com filled most of the commercial breaks (some bigger companies like Spotify and TikTok did appear).
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Why Did Big Advertisers Stay Away From The Kirk Townhall?
Wharton marketing professor David Reibstein said mainstream advertisers have gotten “gun shy” when it comes to controversial or politically affiliated programs: “There’s a fear by advertisers that, if I advertise on this program, whatever effect it has on the viewer will spill over into the commercial break.” Advertisers don’t want to align themselves with controversy, he said. The combination of Kirk as a controversial political figure—and the unknown response to a new program format—likely combined to scare off some number of advertisers, Reibstein said. Direct-response advertisers, on the other hand, often fish for lower-cost slots on television, Reibstein says, or they pay less for their spots in exchange for the network choosing when to play their commercials, as opposed to buying them during a specific program.
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