Judging by President Trump’s most recent post about TV ratings — “if you get ratings, you can say or do anything” — “South Park” can keep up the savage Trump criticism.
The 27th season premiere of the animated series attracted 5.9 million viewers across the Comedy Central cable channel and the Paramount+ streaming service last week, parent company Paramount said Wednesday.
That’s the “best season premiere rating since 2022,” Paramount noted — a notable data point given the general downward trajectory of basic cable channels like Comedy Central. The channel also said “South Park” enjoyed its biggest share of the cable audience for a season premiere episode since 1999.
The show, historically an equal-opportunity offender, garnered attention for its ruthless and profane commentary about the president, which likely drove additional streaming viewership during the three day period that Paramount touted.
After the show depicted Trump in bed with Satan and ridiculed the president’s genitalia, the Trump White House said “this show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”
Trump himself shrugged off the televised satire, which stood out in part because Paramount also recently agreed to pay $16 million toward his future presidential library to resolve his legally dubious lawsuit against CBS News.
Trump loyalists at the FCC agreed to bless Paramount’s pending merger with Skydance Media days after the settlement was finalized — though the officials involved said the merger review process was unrelated.
“South Park” called out its parent company both for agreeing to settle the lawsuit and separately for canceling “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
Trump has recently celebrated the end of Colbert’s show and expressed hope that his other late-night critics on TV will also be cancelled.
In one of those posts, he wrote, “Show biz and television is a very simple business. If you get ratings, you can say or do anything. If you don’t, you always become a victim.”
In the digital age, TV channels measure success through ratings, subscriptions and associated metrics like social media virality.
On Wednesday Comedy Central boasted that last week’s season premiere was the “most social episode” of “South Park” ever, and the “most social program across all TV” last Wednesday.
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