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Scores for the 2025 Kennedy Heart Honors sunk to its lowest numbers ever as President Donald Trump hosted the once-prestigious occasion from the renamed Washington, D.C. performing arts middle, which he altered to incorporate his identify weeks after its taping.
The awards ceremony drew in simply 3.01 million viewers because it broadcast on CBS and stay streamed on Paramount+ on Tuesday, Dec. 23, in response to Nielsen live-plus-same-day + huge panel figures. As preliminary rankings instructed, the 2025 ceremony marked the bottom viewers for the Kennedy Heart Honors, and even sunk decrease than the COVID-restricted 2021 program, which gathered 4.1 million complete viewers, its lowest viewership on the time.
The rankings plummet displays the outrage surrounding Trump’s renaming of the the Kennedy Heart, previously the John F. Kennedy Memorial Heart for the Performing Arts, to the “Trump-Kennedy Heart,” a renaming that was introduced by press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Dec. 18. The renaming got here months after Trump took over because the venue’s chairman, which additionally drew substantial backlash, together with from artists Issa Rae, Renée Fleming, Shonda Rhimes and Ben Folds, who resigned from their posts or canceled their occasions on the Kennedy Heart.
The identify change had not but been introduced when the 2025 Kennedy Heart Honors was filmed on Dec. 7, although Trump’s involvement within the ceremony, of which he named himself the host, was possible sufficient of a detractor for some viewers. The ceremony, which has beforehand honored Meryl Streep, Stevie Marvel, Tina Turner, Billy Joel and Tom Hanks, featured honorees together with George Strait, KISS, Michael Crawford, Gloria Gaynor and Sylvester Stallone.
The choice to rename the Kennedy Heart has drawn extreme backlash throughout the board, together with from members of the Kennedy household like Maria Shriver, Kerry Kennedy and Jack Schlossberg, in addition to a number of performing arts teams and organizations who sometimes carry out on the Kennedy Heart. The performers and teams refusing to affiliate with the Kennedy Heart embrace Chuck Redd, who cancelled his Christmas efficiency following information of the identify change, Doug Varone and Dancers, jazz group The Cookers and Kristy Lee.
The Kennedy Heart Honors have been broadcast on CBS for the reason that ceremony’s debut in 1978. The Paramount-owned community’s deal to televise the occasion is up after this 12 months’s ceremony, that means that the rights for the occasion might be up for grabs by different networks and doubtlessly streamers.
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