Latest RHOD drops out of Monday's cable top 100 in motherlode 18-to-49-year-old demographic while also drawing its biggest overall crowd since Week 2
06/02/16 04:38 PM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
The Memorial Day ratings for cable TV attractions were slow in coming because of the holiday weekend. And when they finally did arrive, your friendly content provider looked in vain for the usual lower region ranking of Real Housewives of Dallas among the top 100 programs tabulated by tvbythenumbers.com.
Bravo’s 8 p.m. Monday lead-in attraction, Southern Charm, occupied its usual middle-of-the-pack spot with 1,144,000 viewers nationally and a .4 rating among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds. But where was Episode 8 of RHOD?
A call to a source at tvbythenumbers solved the mystery. For the first time since its April 11th premiere, RHOD ranked entirely out of the top 100 in the key 18-to-49-year-old demographic, which is how the website ranks its daily menu of cable offerings. It had a rounded off .3 rating that this time around computed to 422,000 viewers in the 18-to-49 age range. The 100th-ranked attraction (not sure what that was) had 425,000 viewers. So it was close, but no “Jesus Juice.”
On the other hand, RHOD drew 899,000 total viewers to rank an overall 80th among cable attractions. And while that still wasn’t much of a crowd, it was RHOD’s biggest haul since Episode 2 drew 920,000 viewers. The low mark is still 789,000 viewers for Episode 5. Episode 7 had 883,000, with only the premiere hour straying into one million viewers territory with 1,076,000.
Episode 8 pretty much centered on giggly Stephanie Hollman’s husband, Travis, demanding another big blowout for his birthday. So she arranged a “Great Gatsby”-themed party at a local club before climactically popping out of a cake for hubby back at their palatial home. Before any of this happened, Stephanie fretted that all of the stress she was under could result in “pooper pants.” It’s already been established that this woman can expertly pass gas upon request. So that would have been quite a blowout. But no.
RHOD’s future on Bravo remains very iffy. As previously noted, it’s the only one of the nine Real Housewives franchises to average less than one million total viewers per episode. Cripes, all NINE! Memorial Day repeats in USA network’s Chrisly Knows Best marathon drew more total viewers and more 18-to-49-year-olds than the latest new RHOD.
Next week’s episode will follow the five principals and designated friend Marie Reyes to Austin via a road trip “spontaneously” arranged at the Gatsby party by a once again over-served Brandi Redmond. As you can see from the above Bravo tease, the former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader gets blasted again. Which doesn’t set/sit well with volcanic LeeAnne Locken after -- damn! -- the two of them had just made up.
Only 10 episodes of RHOD, plus a climactic “reunion” hour, have been ordered for Season One. Anything’s possible, but at the moment it looks as though that June 20th get-together could be the last chance for Brandi to get bombed -- on TV at least.
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