Samantha Bee’s apology for calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c–t” was too little, too late for sponsor Autotrader. The “Full Frontal” host can’t really afford to lose any more advertisers, because based on the below TV ratings, TBS has already absorbed a blow in ad revenue generated by her weekly time slot.
Year-to-date, Bee’s Nielsen ratings are down 34 percent among adults ages 18-49, which is the demographic most-coveted by primetime advertisers. Isolating just millennials, a label assigned to adults ages 18-34, she’s shed a whopping 47 percent — or nearly half — of her 2017 viewership.
In terms of total viewers, “Full Frontal” is down 29 percent year over year.
Those losses are really bad. They are also about the same when isolating Q2 2018 vs. Q2 2017 and the entire fall/spring season-to-date, so we won’t bog you down with too much data.
Some of Bee’s decline can be explained by timing: She had a lot of buzz when the show first began — this is now Season 3. And the further we get into Donald Trump’s presidency, the less liberals are turning to dissenting TV programs to find an ally.
Yes, this is all becoming normal.
One day after calling the first daughter a “c–t,” Bee has apologized, saying, “I would like to sincerely apologize to Ivanka Trump and to my viewers for using an expletive on my show to describe her last night. It was inappropriate and inexcusable. I crossed a line, and I deeply regret it.”
Her Turner network shouldered some of the blame as well, adding: “Samantha Bee has taken the right action in apologizing for the vile and inappropriate language she used about Ivanka Trump last night. Those words should not have been aired. It was our mistake too, and we regret it.”
TBS has since scrubbed Wednesday’s entire episode from the internet, but here is Bee’s original remark in full: “Let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad’s immigration practices you feckless c-t!” said Bee. “He listens to you. Put on something tight and low cut and tell your father to f-ing stop it. Tell him it was an Obama thing and see how it goes.”