Time To ‘Face’ the Music?

Last week we reported that the big winner of the Sunday morning TV battle was CBS–at least in the form of Sunday Morning. This week, though, CBS was the big loser.

In D.C., Fox News Sunday pulled a 2.3, narrowly beating CBS’ ‘Face’ with a 2.1, and ABC’s ‘This Week’ pulled only a 1.3–its second week in a row of dismal ratings locally. Meanwhile, though, the show is doing very strongly nationally: taking second overall for the second week in a row and beating ‘Face’ in 11 of the top 12 markets. Nationally, Fox finished last with a 1.3–about average for Chris Wallace.

This Sunday show battle seems to leave two big unanswered sets of questions:

1) Why is Fox News Sunday doing so well in D.C. and yet that strength is not translating anywhere else in the country–red markets or blue markets?

2) What’s happening to “Face the Nation” nationally? Does the public have Bob Schieffer fatigue? Or is Schieffer himself fatigued?

Any hypotheses out there?

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