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The third of the franchises to hit the airwaves, and what would become its highest rated franchise overall, actually debuted to incredibly low ratings. After many complaints of the lack of diversity in the RHOC & RHoNY casts, Bravo astutely set a show in the Atlanta outskirts and thus the Real Housewives of Atlanta was created. The original cast contained four women of color DeShawn Snow, Lisa Wu Hartwell, NeNe Leakes and Sheree Whitfield, as well as Connecticut transplant Kim Zolciak. It could be argued that Bravo played into stereotypes of black woman only being rich through being married to athletes; Snow, Whitfield & Hartwell either were or had been married to NFL or NBA players, but at least they got away from the 100% Caucasian cast of the first 2 franchises.

It was ironic that the debut episode of this diverse cast rated so poorly, with only 658,000 viewers tuning in. But through a quirk of scheduling Bravo had planned the premiere on a date that subsequently also included a debate between Presidential candidates Barack Obama & John McCain on October 7th, 2008. Despite that poor start the 7th episode finale was watched by 2,212,000 and the following week’s reunion by a massive 2,817,000; both of which were Real Housewives records at the time, as was its regular season average of 1,312,000 which increased to 1,500,000 once the reunion aired.

As for all new shows Bravo filmed a short season; this one having eight episodes in total; 7 regular with 1 reunion.

Source: Nielsen Media Research via TVByTheNumbers and/or TheFutonCritic

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