(FiveNation.com)- The Jan. 6th committee hearing on Thursday night replaced a Young Sheldon rerun on the CBS 8 pm primetime schedule. Financially, it was a mistake.
The network’s “Capitol Assault Hearings” coverage on Thursday night had just 3.24 million viewers.
3.86 million viewers saw a Young Sheldon repeat on CBS precisely one week earlier, which means that the first hearing was watched by about 600,000 fewer people than an old episode of the coming-of-age sitcom.
The gap is even more apparent regarding brand-new Young Sheldon episodes. More than 7 million people tuned in to watch the season five finale on Thursday, May 19, at 8 p.m. on CBS. The show was titled “A Clogged Pore, Little Spanish, and the Future.” A new episode titled “Uncle Sheldon and a Hormonal Firecracker” aired three weeks prior and garnered 6.9 million viewers.
Given that Americans are currently experiencing record-high inflation and gas prices, the revelation suggests that Democrats will have difficulty using the hearings to win over voters before the November midterm elections. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said just hours after the hearing was over that May’s inflation rate increased by the fastest amount in more than four decades, or 8.6 percent.
Republicans used that announcement on Friday morning to claim that Democrats are not giving voters’ concerns top priority. Google trend data reveals that midterm voters had “extremely low interest” in the January 6 riots compared to problems like jobs, taxes, and inflation.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R., Kan.) said President Biden and Nancy Pelosi are detached from reality and focused on their political smokescreen January 6 hearings. Meanwhile, Kansas families are struggling just to make ends meet each day as they deal with a level of inflation many of them have never seen in their lifetimes.
In a Friday morning tweet, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy urged Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats to host a prime-time hearing on the out-of-control inflation their policies have generated.
The committee’s hearing on Thursday night was not the final meeting; it will hold three additional meetings within the following week. But because none of those sessions are set to show during prime time, there will likely be fewer viewers than a rerun of Gilligan’s Island.
