A very similar week on cable this past week through Monday. True Blood on HBO plateaued at a 2.6 Adult 18-49 rating, leading all cable telecasts despite being available in a small minority of US television homes. The Newsroom from Aaron Sorkin plunged 62% with Adults 18-49 and 54% with Viewers 2+. Don’t look for a build in the ratings for The Newsroom from here. Anyone who wanted to show up to the lecture, probably made it to the well-publicized and promoted premiere. Week two of Dallas settled in to a 1.3 rating with Adults 18-49 (from a 1.5 premiere), but the older audience really bailed on the show, the Viewer 2+ number (dominated by the 50+ audience) plummeted 31% from premiere to week two.
Pawn Stars on History is holding nicely around a 2 rating, the top unscripted option on cable, while Storage Wars on A&E rebounded this week and is not far behind. VH1 had a very good week with the second episode of Love and Hip Hop 2, building to a 1.6 rating from the 1.1 premiere. Not a regular viewer of Love and Hip Hop 2, I present a summary of this minor hit that seems to be resonating with the audience:
Courtesy hiphopwired.com
Episode numero two of VH1’s Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta aired last night and while there was less f-ckery than on the premiere episode, there was still plenty of ratchetness to go around. While Rasheeda tried to make sure her rap career stays in order and Scrappy’s baby momma spent quality time with her mom, the talk of the Internets was clearly all about the ongoing faux-pimp struggle of former Bad Boy Hitman Stevie J.
The jury is still out over Joseline Hernandez and her, as Lil Scrappy puts it, “manly features,” but without dropping any spoilers for those who haven’t seen the episode, we will say that her and Stevie J’s convo over a pregnancy test is beyond awkward.
Not everyone is entertained by the show’s dysfunction caught on camera antics, though. There is currently an online petition seeking to have it removed from the air citing its “exploitation of the lived experiences of people who may not even know they’re being exploited.” As this post is published, the petition has over 2,200 signatures.
Elsewhere in the land of cable reality, Bristol Palin’s new reality show, Life’s a Tripp on Lifetime, bombed. A 61% drop in viewers 2+ from its Dance Moms lead-in (a horrific 39% retention level — usually anything below 70% retention causes distress). Who says fans of Dance Moms aren’t discerning? And in the Is This As Good As It Gets department, Oprah Winfrey pulled out all the stops, landing Kim Kardashian and clan for a two-part interview on Oprah’s Next Chapter. Part 2 on Sunday averaged a 0.5 rating with Adults 18-49, a towering number for OWN but it’s less than half of the audience that turned up to see the “real thing” on E! an hour later on Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Stay classy, Basic Cable.
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