South Park ratings spike in the US thanks to Donald Trump

Donald Trump may have declared South Park’s popularity had hit record lows after the show viscerally took down the US president in its most recent episode, but the numbers tell the opposite story.

Last week’s season 27 opener rated 5.9 million viewers across platforms in the US. The more significant stat is that it’s a 68 per cent increase on the previous season opener in February 2023.

In Australia, the series is available on Paramount+, where it is currently the number one series on the streaming platform.

The episode, called Sermon on ’Mount, took aim at many subjects but saved its most pointed barbs for Trump.

The president featured in many scenes including as Satan’s lover, a position the show had previously reserved for Saddam Hussein. It also created a mock public service announcement for the end of the episode, centred on a deepfake version of Trump completely in the nude and stumbling through the desert.

A recurring motif throughout the episode was the dramatised Trump and his micro-penis, which the show depicted in both animated and live-action deepfake form. For the latter, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker put cartoon eyes on the miniscule phallus so it could get past censors by arguing that it was a separate character.

After its premiere, the White House extended South Park’s publicity by hitting back, “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”.

The plot of the episode concerned the town of South Park being sued by Trump for $5 billion after it protested against his administration, and eventually settling for $3.5 million and the promise to make positive PSAs, which led to that deepfake vignette.

That storyline directly referenced the 60 Minutes lawsuit Trump levelled against American TV network CBS, which shares the same parent company, Paramount (hence the ’Mount in the episode title), as Comedy Central, the broadcast home of South Park.

CBS settled the legal action, which it originally said had no merit, for $US16 million, a move that is widely seen to be a capitulation to Trump so that the government-controlled Federal Communications Commission would approve a pending $US8 billion merger between Paramount and production business Skydance.

That approval came last week, three weeks after the lawsuit was settled. The FCC decision had been held up for months before that.

Following the settlement, Trump bragged on social media that he had exacted a commitment from the incoming Paramount owners for a further $US20 million worth of PSAs.

There was also the contentious negotiations between Stone and Parker and Paramount on a new deal for South Park, which led to accusations from the South Park team that the incoming Skydance executives were interfering in their talks with rival studios.

Earlier in the month, the pair had posted on social media, “This merger is a sh-tshow and it’s f—king up South Park.”

The parties eventually closed a $US1.5 billion five-year agreement – not bad for a show that the White House called irrelevant.

Content to ride the wave of an episode that thrust it back into the headlines, South Park is taking a two-week break before its next instalment. The show’s production cycle has a quick turnaround so many are expecting the upcoming episode will likely reference the reaction to Sermon on the ’Mount.