I told you the summer swoon was coming.
In a ratings preview of what's likely to come for the Fox News host, whose show has traditionally not performed well during the summer months, just-released Nielsen ratings numbers from last week confirm that Glenn Beck posted its weakest numbers of the entire year. (Cue the Beck whining/spinning.)
Even worse for Beck? Last Friday's program was his single lowest-rating show of the year.
For the June 11 airing, Glenn Beck attracted 1.74 million viewers. Glenn Beck's previous, non-vacation, low for the year came on May 14, which drew 1.77 million viewers. And yes, those tallies are almost exactly half the daily audience the show was landing at its peak in January.
How soft were last week's numbers? On only one of the five weekdays, June 9, did Glenn Beck draw more than 2 million viewers. In other words, for most of 2010 it's been unusual for Glenn Beck to fall below the 2 million-viewer mark. It had only happened a handful of times all year. But last week, it happened on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Looks like it's going to be a long summer for Beck, even though he claims he's poised to change the course of U.S. history in August.
UPDATED: Beck is hyping a special “Summer of Restoration” for his Tuesday Fox News program. Is he referring to his ratings?
UPDATED: As a commenter notes, Beck's sub- 2 million streak actually dates back to the previous week, Friday June 4, when the show posted 1.8 million viewers, That means, of the six most recently rated episodes, five of them failed to attract 2 million viewers.
In other words, Glenn Beck is now getting the softer type of ratings the show used to land when Beck was on vacation and didn't even host the program.