LuAnn, Sonja & Heather
at dinner in London

If last season is any guide, then after 6 episodes the Real Housewives of New York is now one third of the way through its 5th season. Like 50% of its cast, this retooled season, is still trying to it find its footing and we’re not sure whether the London trip helped or hindered that. With both Ramona Singer & Aviva Drescher staying behind in New York, the RHoNY trip lost a lot of star wattage. ‘Girly’ time in the hotel might have been fun but scenes like those, don’t exactly set ratings alight and that’s what this season badly needs.

Since RHoNY S5 debuted with 1.66m viewers some five weeks ago, the following four weeks’ ratings have stayed remarkably consistent; all within 5% of one another. With the 6th episode which aired on Monday night getting just 1,299,000 viewers and a 2nd week with just 0.50 in the 18-49 demo, you could say that RHoNY Season 5, is less of a solid performer for Bravo that it once was. This season is also solidly down against seasons 4 (-23.21%) , 3 (-20.99%) and 2 (-17.37%), although it is up against its freshman season from 2008 (+20.83%) when the franchise was still very much in its infancy. Girls Night Out from that season, garnered 1,426,000 viewers and last night’s Girls Night In certainly could have done with a clash as monumental as the one between Ramona Singer & Simon van Kempen. In our predictions for the week we estimated RHoNY would get between 1.3-1.4m and while it only just missed 1.3m, the fact that it dropped below that is not a good sign for the remaining episodes. The 18-49 demo audience is down 33% from last season (0.60 from 0.90) and that has to be costing Bravo a significant amount in lost advertising dollars. With this season already all filmed, Bravo can do nothing but see the remainder of this season out. If you were in Andy Cohen’s shoes for a day, what changes would you make in preparation for the sixth season?

No numbers yet for Miss Advised although we should have them around 7pm and will post an update then. Sonja Morgan and the Scissor Sisters did scrape into the Cable Top 100 scoring 778,000 viewers and 0.30 in the demo when they joined Andy in the Clubhouse on What What Happens Live.

Update 8pm – July 10, 2012

After falling last week by 28.45%, Miss Advised climbed 24.4% this week, almost back to its 2nd week’s ratings and this week scored 594,000 viewers. Most important though, is that it managed to score 0.30 in the 18-49 demo, something it hadn’t done since its premiere episode on June 18th. With it getting a 0.30, it’s certainly bought itself at least one more week of Monday airings, and may well have kept the 10pm time slot as well. Also in its favor is that WWHL was able to build on its 10pm lead-in and rate in the Top 100 nightly cable shows (again Miss Advised didn’t), for the first time since RHoNY and Miss Advised took over the Monday schedule on Bravo.

Source: Nielsen Media Research via TVByTheNumbers and TheFutonCritic

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