In April 2013 Bravo Media announced their 2013 slate of new and renewed programming and we’re afraid that Around The World in 80 Plates wasn’t on it. To see the other nine shows that also missed out on renewal and their ratings which acts as a guide to the audience size that a show needs to succeed on Bravo TV click here.

Full Season Summary

Around the World in 80 Plates is Bravo’s combination of the competition element of their highly successful Top Chef franchise with a travel element (aka Amazing Race) to diversify the audience beyond Bravo’s die-hard Top Chef fans. With well-regarded hosts Curtis Stone (Host of Top Chef Masters – Season 3) & Food Network’s Iron Chef, Cat Cora, Bravo had high hopes of new breakout food show. Despite a large ad buy by the cable net and a slew of sponsorship deals including Chase Bank & Gilt Groupe, among others, the premiere debuted to disappointing audience of just under 800,000 with only 0.3 in the 18-49 demo. In its second and third weeks it fell to the mid 600k & mid 500K respectively and the only comfort to be taken was that there was no decline in its first three weeks 18-49 demo of 0.3.

FINAL UPDATE – July 24th, 2012

At 10pm the 1st (and only?) season of Around The World in 80 Plates reached its final destination and Avery managed to beat out fellow finalists, Steve ‘Nookie’ Postal and Liz Garrett for the win. What didn’t turn out to be a ratings winner though was this particular show. The final episode was only the third highest rated (out of 10) with 830,000 viewers and 0.30 in the 18-49 demo. Overall the season averaged 750,600 viewers with a 0.34% of 18 to 49 year old’s tuning in. To put that in comparison Chef Roble & Co in its freshman season averaged 1,155,000 with 0.54%, and that would have been a much cheaper show for Bravo to produce.

Photo by: Justin Stephens/BravoTV ©

Bravo had hopes that this would be not only a very successful show attracting a large audience but that it would also garner nominations to compete with the Amazing Race and other comparable reality shows in this genre, and that just might have its problem. From what we saw of 80 Plates, we weren’t sure if we were watching a travelogue or a cooking competition and some of the travels seemed to forced, which detracted from the competition by adding erroneous elements. We’d bet Bravo will look long and hard at 80 Plates’ format before re-upping it for another season.

If you’re a fan of 80 Plates let us know your feedback in the comments, on what worked and what you think didn’t, in this first season. Also how do you think Curtis & Cat worked well together as a hosting team?

UPDATE – July 12th, 2012

The penultimate episode of 80 Plates arrived in Argentina and I’m sure with the dismal ratings this season has garnered, there’ll be certain Bravo execs who will have been crying either in their soup plate or for Argentina. In addition neither Curtis nor Cat nor frankly show sponsors; Chase Sapphire Preferred, Gilt Groupe and Infiniti cars will have been thrilled at the audience size. This week, with just 767,000 viewers tuning in and scoring a low 0.30 in the 18-49 demo, the season is now averaging 741,778 viewers with 0.33 in the 18-49 demo.

UPDATE – June 28th, 2012

Last night on Around the World in 80 Plates the competition heated up and by the 8th episode’s end we were down to the last four contestants; Steve Nookie’ Postal, Avery Pursell, John Vermiglio and Liz Garrett. While a new season high of 835,000 watched last night the demo worryingly dropped from 0.40 last week to 0.30 this week, as Nicole Lou bowed out. With viewership climbing from a low in week three of 550,000 to last week’s high of 831,000, it’s taken a while for the audience to get behind this show. Now that they finally seem to be doing so, with both the last 2 episodes breaching 800k in total audience, there’s now a two week break before the 2nd to last episode airs on July 11th.

UPDATE – June 21st, 2012
After Monday’s disappointing premiere ratings for ‘Miss Advised‘ Monday, Bravo got same great news as ‘Around the World in 80 Plates‘ landed in Thailand. Ratings shot up this week 18% to a season high 831,000 viewers with 0.40 in the 18-49 demo. This is the first episode to break 800k and is a gain of 5% compared with the premiere episode that aired May 9th. This has boosted the season average to almost 725,000.

UPDATE – June 14th, 2012
The was some question whether the return of ‘Dallas’ on TNT would have an impact on 80 Plates’ audience, and while this 6th episode was down 8% against last week’s, the lead-in ‘Million Dollar Listing – LA‘ grew 8% in the 9pm hour and so any ‘Dallas’ effect can be discounted. This episode had almost identical viewer numbers to its season average and the question Bravo and its advertisers are pondering is whether there is still time to grow the audience. Viewer comments seemed to be trending towards that there’s too much ‘Survivor’ and not enough ‘Top Chef’ and so far it seems Bravo has failed to find that right balance.

UPDATE – June 7th, 2012

The fourth & fifth episodes rebounded to close to its premiere numbers with the demo climbing to 0.4 and now the season average has also pushed above 700,000 viewers, although its audience is still smaller than the, much lower in production costs, show ‘Pregnant In Heels’.

The competing chefs at the beginning of the series were Chaz Brown, Liz Garrett, Jenna Johansen, Nick Lacasse, Keven “Cheven” Lee, Nicole Lou, Clara Moore, Sai Pituk, Steve “Nookie” Postal, Avery Pursell, John Vermiglio and Gary Walker.

Source: Nielsen Media Research via TVByTheNumbers and/or TheFutonCritic/strong>