RHOC Reunion Part 2
Airs Mon, Tues & Thur this week
Photo courtesy of BravoTV ©

With Sunday’s ratings not released until Tuesdays at Noon Eastern, we turn our attention at Bravo Ratings on Mondays to the schedule for the coming week and make a few predictions on how various shows might rate. The original programming kicks off on Sundays with RHoNJ and this 4th season has seen some wildly fluctuating ratings. 11 episodes in, four episodes have scored in the 2.2-2.3m range but overall the season average to date is just shy of 2.5m, meaning that other episodes have scored much higher. There’s been a 32% swing between the highest and lowest rated episode which shows some serious volatility in the audience. Of course, as Bravo repeats each episode several times this allows viewers to pick and chose their own time slots (as of course do DVRs & Tivos) but it also detracts from the water cooler buzz that has helped make some of Bravo shows ‘must watch’ when it first airs. For this week’s 12th episode of RHoNJ S4 we’re seeing a little slippage in the buzz and estimating 2.2m-2.4m.

Sunday night’s WWHL with its strongest 10pm lead-in of the week, is also predictably the highest rated of the week but this week, with Kathy Wakile (with Vanessa Williams) who doesn’t have the same pull as say Teresa or Melissa, Jacqueline or Caroline for that matter, we are expecting it to drop to below 1.2m viewers and perhaps as low as 1m. Expect around 50% audience retention from RHoNJ.

For the last 6 weeks Mondays, original programming has been kicked off by RHoNY but with it scoring awful ratings in comparison to prior seasons, Bravo decided to provide it with a lead-in from its older sister, RHoC and brought forward the first airing of the 2nd part of its seventh season reunion. For the last couple of seasons RHoNY has rated higher than RHOC but not this time. By virtue of the stronger lead-in provided by RHOC, this week’s RHoNY will definitely get a significant lift in ratings but we’ll be surprised if it tops the 1.66m who watched the RHoNY season 5 premiere, but it should go close. So we’re predicting 1.6-1.7m for RHoNY’s 7th episode.

Predicting Monday’s 8/7c central airing of the RHoC reunion is a little harder. It’s a different time slot and many casual viewers won’t have been aware of the time change and so will tune in for the original advertised time of 9/8c Tuesday. Still we think around 1.7-1.9m will watch Monday’s airing, and 15-20% of them who don’t normally watch RHoNY whil keep Bravo on at 9/8c to give RHoNY its lift. Luann Delesseps joins Andy on WWHL Monday, but will struggle to make that night’s Cable Top 100 shows, a feat Sonja achieved last week.

Similarly Tuesday’s repeat of RHOC reunion part 2, will draw 1.8-1.9m viewers, down from the 2.4m that probably would have watched if it hadn’t been moved to Monday for its first airing. This means that Pregnant in Heels will lose a little of it’s lead-in and we predict that despite this episode featuring the birth of show creator, Rosie Pope’s baby, will only get a viewer total of between 700-800k. Tiffani Amber Thiesen is Andy’s guest and again that episode is unlikely to make the Cable Top 100.

Wednesday is the 6th episode of MDL-LA and no doubt will continue drawing and audience around 900k, plus or minus 50k, where it’s rated this season. Around the World in 80 Plates filmed its finale in Uruguay and like Argentina failed to lift ratings last week, Uruguay will also, this week. Ratings for 80 Plates have been desperately disappointing and it will be interesting to see if it gets renewed for a 2nd season. Bravo badly need a new hit food show as Top Chef and its spin-offs come to the end of their natural lives, but we’re not sure they found it with 80 Plates. Neither of Wednesday’s (Ashley Tisdale & Chris Colfer) or Thursday’s (Lorraine Bracco & Ralph Macchio) WWHL will rate high enough to score in either night’s Cable Top 100 shows.

July 17th Update Just realized, we forgot to mention ‘Miss Advised’ in the text above. How did it slip our mind? Oops! But, in the below table, we project much the same as last week, 550k-600k and don’t expect it to gain much from the RHOC lead-in to RHoNY.

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Anyway, here are this week’s ratings projections for the 1st run programming (as well as a couple of OC repeats) on Bravo TV.