The Challenge: Cut Throat - Ratings

Thank you for explaining that! :D

[QUOTE=andrew;214006]Real World / Road Rules Challenge - 1.275 million viewers Total amount of viewers. - 0.9/2 HH .9% of all households in the US watched the Challenge. 2% of all households that had their TV on at that time were tuned into the Challenge. - 0.7/2 A18-49 .7% of all 18-49 year olds in the US watched the challenge. 2% of all 18-49 year olds in the US that had their TV on were tuned into the Challenge. W means women. Companies gear ads towards the 18-49 demographic, so this is the one that TV programs try to do well in. MTV is having a lot of success with Teen Mom and Jersey Shore. Not so much with the RW franchise. Wonder what they are going to do with the franchise when their other nights are successful.[/QUOTE] Well said. May I add that of the numbers given, the .7 (A18-49) is BY FAR the most important. Total viewers doesn't matter even a little bit at all for MTV. This is bad.

[QUOTE=andrew;214006]... MTV is having a lot of success with Teen Mom and Jersey Shore. Not so much with the RW franchise. Wonder what they are going to do with the franchise when their other nights are successful.[/QUOTE] I am not sure that the RW franchise's success is [I]that[/I] measured by ratings the way those two shows are. Jersey Shore will have a short shelf life. Teen Mom is not ripe for product placement. IMO, the RW/Challenge combo likely do much better in drawing people to the MTV website and are the cornerstones of product placement revenues. What I suspect is going on right now is that MTV is driving down RW ratings by not promoting the show so they can renew for cheaper--Brooklyn was the last season that had heavy peak time rotation and advertising. If BMP has to renew on the cheap, then they will either have to reinvent the show or it will be forced to have shorter filmings and cheaper houses and the like to maintain profitability. I cannot imagine MTV getting rid of RW just because the older half of the 18-49 demo will end up walking away from the network since that is the last thing that links today's MTV to the MTV when they were younger. I have always wondered why MTV isn't doing more programming for say the 30-49 groups with some sort of entertainment talk show or "Behind the Music" type programming that have less to do with a cast and more to do with a stream of entertainers, musicians, etc.

MTV quit caring about 30-49 year olds when it first came on the air. The channel is geared toward younger people, and at this point in their history, to teenage girls. For a long time VH1 was "MTV for adults" (albeit VH1's ratings are now laughable) before cable TV is what it is today. There are plenty of options out there for the 30-49 crowd on cable television that is keeping them away from MTV (that and the ****** programming on the channel). Regardless of the product placement aspect (how much money do you really think they get for product placement when no one watches the shows to begin with) and short shelf lives (I'm thinking Osbournes, Newleyweds, and at one point, The Real World), MTV is back on track with successful shows. They know what works, and the RW franchise doesn't any more.

[QUOTE=SeanDaniel;214039]I am not sure that the RW franchise's success is [I]that[/I] measured by ratings the way those two shows are. Jersey Shore will have a short shelf life. Teen Mom is not ripe for product placement. IMO, the RW/Challenge combo likely do much better in drawing people to the MTV website and are the cornerstones of product placement revenues. What I suspect is going on right now is that MTV is driving down RW ratings by not promoting the show so they can renew for cheaper--Brooklyn was the last season that had heavy peak time rotation and advertising. If BMP has to renew on the cheap, then they will either have to reinvent the show or it will be forced to have shorter filmings and cheaper houses and the like to maintain profitability. I cannot imagine MTV getting rid of RW just because the older half of the 18-49 demo will end up walking away from the network since that is the last thing that links today's MTV to the MTV when they were younger. I have always wondered why MTV isn't doing more programming for say the 30-49 groups with some sort of entertainment talk show or "Behind the Music" type programming that have less to do with a cast and more to do with a stream of entertainers, musicians, etc.[/QUOTE] The ads for this season of the Challenge can't be blamed, we all applauded how good of a job MTV was doing to promote it compared to FM2 cause they did give the ads more airtime. As for ratings...all tv shows regardless of franchises or not, are judge by the ratings.

Teen Mom and Jersey Shore's recent seasons will be over in a couple of weeks. Though these shows come on different nights from the challenges, perhaps if the previews for the episodes of the challenges are good and played enough, the challenge may pick up a fraction of some of MTV's viewers who want to see reality TV on MTV.

I honestly can't stand Jersey Shore. I don't get why that show has such high ratings. If RW and the challenges aren't on MTV anymore..I'm getting rid of cable! LOL

[QUOTE=Entropy;213988]wow it went down. I see the biggest rated episode this season will be when CT shows up.[/QUOTE] In the last episode or two... but will people in sufficient numbers still be watching by then?

[QUOTE=JustAGurl;214074]I honestly can't stand Jersey Shore. I don't get why that show has such high ratings. If RW and the challenges aren't on MTV anymore..I'm getting rid of cable! LOL[/QUOTE] I watched the first season just to see the train wreck and I actually liked the editing/camera work. Now that there is a Season 2, these people are taking themselves much too seriously and I have not watched more than 10 minutes at a time of it. This show has outlived its appeal.

[QUOTE=andrew;214006]Real World / Road Rules Challenge - 1.275 million viewers Total amount of viewers. - 0.9/2 HH .9% of all households in the US watched the Challenge. 2% of all households that had their TV on at that time were tuned into the Challenge. - 0.7/2 A18-49 .7% of all 18-49 year olds in the US watched the challenge. 2% of all 18-49 year olds in the US that had their TV on were tuned into the Challenge. W means women. Companies gear ads towards the 18-49 demographic, so this is the one that TV programs try to do well in. MTV is having a lot of success with Teen Mom and Jersey Shore. Not so much with the RW franchise. Wonder what they are going to do with the franchise when their other nights are successful.[/QUOTE] This is a very significant ratings drop from week one. The first week's numbers can be attributed to creative trailer editing, a decent ad budget and some creative thinking by some new peeps at MTV. Unfortunately, many of the episode one viewers didn't find that what they had seen in the trailer translated into something of interesting to have them lining up to watch a second episode. MTV didn't abandon the aging (over 24 audience) as evidenced by strong results across the demographics from "Jersey Shore" and "Teen Mom," and major media interest in those shows -- but it appears that MTV has not been able to successfully dictate a change in casting strategy to BMP. There are a couple of people with six challenges under their belt who never had an series rating average of under 2.0. Why are those people no longer being cast? Those people knew how to bring drama to the screen. Today, we get a bunch on new meat (not necessarily fresh) who poorly attempt to emulate past challenge characters and simply don't have the acting chops to pull it off, IMO. Bacchus is also likely right about a retrenchment in future episode availability. MTV has been on the fence about the future of the challenges, and I think I hear a hammer nailing a coffin closed somewhere in the distance...

[QUOTE=Entropy;214070]The ads for this season of the Challenge can't be blamed, we all applauded how good of a job MTV was doing to promote it compared to FM2 cause they did give the ads more airtime. As for ratings...all tv shows regardless of franchises or not, are judge by the ratings.[/QUOTE] I disagree. Sponge Bob isn't on TV because of its ratings--it is because of its merchandising. If RW/RR/Challenges do drive significant traffic to the MTV website where there are lots more ads, or make more money on itunes downloads, etc then that is comparable to a merchandising upside that can offset lower ratings. I don't know that it does, but I suspect that it does.

These past two episodes have sucked. But I hope it can only go up

I don't understand why they gave us two huge challenge daily clip (and one that was a bit smaller, but amusing nonetheless) this week, yet they are showing these in next weeks episode. Maybe they thought it would be enough to keep fans interested. Or maybe they forgot the order or something? I don't know. And I do think they could do more with the trailers. Yes, even leading up to the show they could have done more with advertising, but it was improved from more recent shows.

Cara Maria tweeted earlier that it was being re run today around 4 my time (EST) so at least its getting some daytime repeats.

I guess my last point I forgot to make is I do not see that getting 2% of a key target demo when there are more than 50 shows on most people's TV at the same time as being horrible.

[QUOTE=SeanDaniel;214095]I guess my last point I forgot to make is I do not see that getting 2% of a key target demo when there are more than 50 shows on most people's TV at the same time as being horrible.[/QUOTE] You can view that however you want. However, MTV strives to be #1 in that Demo, especially at 10PM, and a 0.7 is simply not good enough. That would get the show renewed on A&E or something, but that's a borderline number on MTV. [QUOTE=SeanDaniel;214087]I disagree. Sponge Bob isn't on TV because of its ratings--it is because of its merchandising. If RW/RR/Challenges do drive significant traffic to the MTV website where there are lots more ads, or make more money on itunes downloads, etc then that is comparable to a merchandising upside that can offset lower ratings. I don't know that it does, but I suspect that it does.[/QUOTE] Spongebob was the #1 rated non-sports program on all of cable last week, as it has been for about 6 years. Its on TV because of its ratings. TV advertising is worth about a bajillion times more than internet advertising. Web views matter little in getting the show renewed because there's no money there. [QUOTE=V1man;214084]This is a very significant ratings drop from week one. The first week's numbers can be attributed to creative trailer editing, a decent ad budget and some creative thinking by some new peeps at MTV. Unfortunately, many of the episode one viewers didn't find that what they had seen in the trailer translated into something of interesting to have them lining up to watch a second episode. MTV didn't abandon the aging (over 24 audience) as evidenced by strong results across the demographics from "Jersey Shore" and "Teen Mom," and major media interest in those shows -- but it appears that MTV has not been able to successfully dictate a change in casting strategy to BMP. There are a couple of people with six challenges under their belt who never had an series rating average of under 2.0. Why are those people no longer being cast? Those people knew how to bring drama to the screen. Today, we get a bunch on new meat (not necessarily fresh) who poorly attempt to emulate past challenge characters and simply don't have the acting chops to pull it off, IMO. Bacchus is also likely right about a retrenchment in future episode availability. MTV has been on the fence about the future of the challenges, and I think I hear a hammer nailing a coffin closed somewhere in the distance...[/QUOTE] I don't think the problem is the casting, I think its the editing and production. The show isn't fun anymore. It used to be produced on the beach in the sun with fun things happening all the time. Now its produced like a WWE show. You don't like the cast as much because they don't show them doing likable things anymore. [QUOTE=RW561015;214071]Teen Mom and Jersey Shore's recent seasons will be over in a couple of weeks. Though these shows come on different nights from the challenges, perhaps if the previews for the episodes of the challenges are good and played enough, the challenge may pick up a fraction of some of MTV's viewers who want to see reality TV on MTV.[/QUOTE] That also means less people will see the commercials for The Challenge; ratings will almost certainly drop. [QUOTE=SeanDaniel;214039]I am not sure that the RW franchise's success is [I]that[/I] measured by ratings the way those two shows are. What I suspect is going on right now is that MTV is driving down RW ratings by not promoting the show so they can renew for cheaper--Brooklyn was the last season that had heavy peak time rotation and advertising.[/QUOTE] I'd like to point out that Road Rules was far more legendary than the challenges are and was cancelled with higher ratings. And there's no way that MTV is driving down their own ratings; that would cost them far more than BMP.

[QUOTE=CastAStone;214156] ... I don't think the problem is the casting, I think its the editing and production. The show isn't fun anymore. It used to be produced on the beach in the sun with fun things happening all the time. Now its produced like a WWE show. [B]You don't like the cast as much because they don't show them doing likable things anymore.[/B] ... [/QUOTE] You presume too much unless your comment was intended to be generic and not a specific rely to my selected quote. As someone who casts for TV, I don't like the mix of people the BMP is putting together, not one the most recent RW or the past three challenges. I know many, if not most of them, and had a chance to meet of few of the new ones recently in Vegas. Individually, most are interesting people, but part of the art of casting is in seeing the intangible potential for chemistry and conflict that is actually interesting and not ordinary. I can't fault your logic with regard to editing and production. BMP has not captured my imagination since their best story editor retired about three years ago. Overall, it's a company with talent and little synergy that somewhere along the way compromised its own (or Mary Alice's) ethical foundation and became greedy.

[QUOTE=V1man;214164]You presume too much unless your comment was intended to be generic and not a specific rely to my selected quote. As someone who casts for TV, I don't like the mix of people the BMP is putting together, not one the most recent RW or the past three challenges. I know many, if not most of them, and had a chance to meet of few of the new ones recently in Vegas. Individually, most are interesting people, but part of the art of casting is in seeing the intangible potential for chemistry and conflict that is actually interesting and not ordinary. I can't fault your logic with regard to editing and production. BMP has not captured my imagination since their best story editor retired about three years ago. Overall, it's a company with talent and little synergy that somewhere along the way compromised its own (or Mary Alice's) ethical foundation and became greedy.[/QUOTE] Definitely meant to be generic. Sorry.

[QUOTE=RW561015;214092]I don't understand why they gave us two huge challenge daily clip (and one that was a bit smaller, but amusing nonetheless) this week, yet they are showing these in next weeks episode. [B]Maybe they thought it would be enough to keep fans interested. Or maybe they forgot the order or something? I don't know.[/B] And I do think they could do more with the trailers. Yes, even leading up to the show they could have done more with advertising, but it was improved from more recent shows.[/QUOTE] You know they have frikken monkeys running the dailies site. They're always fudging up: tagging the wrong people, spelling names wrong, misspelling words. I'm surprised they didn't get a new money by now.

[QUOTE=CastAStone;214156]You can view that however you want. However, MTV strives to be #1 in that Demo, especially at 10PM, and a 0.7 is simply not good enough. That would get the show renewed on A&E or something, but that's a borderline number on MTV.....TV advertising is worth about a bajillion times more than internet advertising. Web views matter little in getting the show renewed because there's no money there.....I'd like to point out that Road Rules was far more legendary than the challenges are and was cancelled with higher ratings. And there's no way that MTV is driving down their own ratings; that would cost them far more than BMP.[/QUOTE] Entertainment television is in transition and trying to figure out a way to compete profitably on the internet and through downloads. Pretty much everyone agrees that they wish a lot of the stuff from the dailies made it to the broadcast. That a lot of the better content is going on the web indicates to me that MTV is trying to figure their way out through all this. Traditional broadcasting is not profitable alone either. Companies like Time Warner and Comcast pay MTV to carry their channels which is why cable costs go up. While we have veered way off topic for this thread, a franchise like RW/Challenges can be the equivalent of grocery stores selling turkey/ham at a loss around holidays to lure you in to buy all your other needs--the profitability is in the mix and cannot be weeded out one by one. As for MTV and their ratings, they bombarded the airways when Brooklyn was on and it did well. From Cancun on, it has been hard to figure out when the repeats air and there is seldom a commercial. It is like MTV abandons the franchise right out of the gates and I can think of no other logical explanation. They are doing better with these Challenges, but they certainly didn't do much with New Orleans comparatively to Brooklyn or the last challenge IMO.

[B][U]Episode 3 ratings[/U][/B] Real World / Road Rules Challenge - 1.281 million viewers - 0.9/2 HH - 0.7/2 A18-49 - 1.4/4 W18-34

So it went up a tiny bit! At least it didn't go down. I can see that the W18-34 went up by .1

I mean, I want the show to be renewed... This is not that cheap of a show to produce, particularly in the Cable Reality genre. I don't know if VMan has any insight into their cost structure or if Molds/Bacchus know how big their crews are and what BMP covers for travel/board/food (I assume its 100%), but compare it to something like Top Chef, which has more effective product placement, is US based for all but 2 episodes, doesn't even furnish their own prize money, puts people in a unimpressive apartment, doesn't film 24 hours or even anywhere close to it, gets paid by local business for the privilege of hosting a competition (vs. RW/RR having to rent their sites and equipment), and... here's the kicker... gets 2-3 times these numbers. I'm not feeling super good about this.

My only hope is that because MTV is doing so well right now, they will not feel the need to cut costs on shows that aren't doing as well like the challenges. At least we definitely have one more to look forward to after Cutthroat. Does anyone know when they would typically make a decision on when a show would be cancelled or not?

Man they only went slightly up... I think we might be seeing the end of these shows soon enough. I don't want these shows to end but if they keep getting these ratings then It may be time for them to ride off into the sunset.

[QUOTE=RMD1;215884]You really don't know :D[/QUOTE] Haha I meant travel/board/food for the Cast. I could not possibly have been less clear when I wrote that though. I know most of the crew is local to wherever they are.

[QUOTE=CastAStone;215904]Haha I meant travel/board/food for the Cast. I could not possibly have been less clear when I wrote that though. [B]I know most of the crew is local to wherever they are.[/B][/QUOTE] For RW, yes but not for challenges.

I'd hate for this to be the reason for the slight ratings bump, but Cutthroat was in the news a lot this week cause of the TJ accident maybe wandering eyes went to see it cause of that, who knows.

[QUOTE=Entropy;215924]I'd hate for this to be the reason for the slight ratings bump, but Cutthroat was in the news a lot this week cause of the TJ accident maybe wandering eyes went to see it cause of that, who knows.[/QUOTE] If it gets a ratings boost for the challenge then so be it.