Hour 2: The Oscars ratings.

The Mark Simone Show

iHeartRadio and Mark Simone

News

4.3 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2026

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This year’s Oscars were notably less political than in recent years, and the ratings reflect a renewed audience interest, pulling in 15 million viewers. Meanwhile, Jimmy Kimmel’s contract is reportedly up in six months, raising questions about his future on late-night TV duties. MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle expressed outrage over the number of people found to have had Jeffrey Epstein’s phone number. On Capitol Hill, Democrats in Congress are polling at their lowest approval ratings on record. Mark takes your calls! Mark interviews streaming host Bill O' Reilly. Bill is in Washington, D.C., for today’s St. Patrick’s Day festivities. O’Reilly notes that without access to the same intelligence reports as President Trump, assessing the timeline of the Iran conflict remains difficult. He also weighs in on the geopolitical implications of a potential Cuba takeover, suggesting it could cost Trump a shot at the Nobel Peace Prize. He also hints at a possible high-profile interview related to Iran that could be in the works. Finally, he predicts that if the Cuban regime falls, there is a strong likelihood that many Cuban exiles, particularly those settled in Florida, will return to the island.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Mark Simone show continues on 710.
0:03.3	W.O.R.
0:06.9	Well, it's St. Patrick's Day, and it's a lot of fun in New York.
0:11.5	It's a bit of a mess.
0:13.7	The parade begins around now and goes till this afternoon, and then it never ends because millions of people show up
0:21.8	this parade, and they don't just leave immediately. They linger around, throw up all over the
0:25.8	place where all sorts of green stuff invade every pub, bar, tavern, restaurant, everything. So it'll
0:33.2	be going on all day to day. Hey, the Oscars.
0:42.9	It was, I don't know, it wasn't a great Oscar ceremony.
0:45.0	It wasn't a horrendous Oscar ceremony.
0:49.1	They did tone down the political nonsense.
0:51.8	It was that one idiot yelling about free Palestine. And then it was Jimmy Kimmel, who is just an angry, angry, bitter guy.
0:58.9	Can you imagine if you had Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, and you had an angry contest?
1:03.0	He's going to be the angrier guy.
1:05.2	And then he's doing this interview that started to go viral.
1:08.9	Afterwards, there were reporters asking him something,
1:11.4	and he just said he's exhausted, exhausted by the state of the world.
1:18.1	You're a comedian.
1:20.0	You don't have to be exhausted.
1:22.9	Johnny Carson, we were talking about him yesterday.
1:25.3	The whole Vietnam War is on the air, having fun every night.
1:28.9	He's on the air through assassinations and Kennedy assassination, Martin Luther King assassination,
	...

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