Melissa Gorga and Mario Lopez
On the Set of WWHL
Photo courtesy of BravoTV ©

Last Sunday night The Real Housewives of New Jersey sat down for a third hour as they rehashed the preceding 20 episodes of their regular season in what has become their longest season in their four seasons. After the first two Reunions had scored ratings of 3,493,000 and 3,594,000 respectively we expected that the third hour would drop from those. Long before the ratings were released on Tuesday, we tweeted out our ratings projections for Sunday & Monday nights including the RHoNJ reunion and wrote:

Bit behind w/updates but RATINGS PROJECTIONS Sun RHoNJ 3.3m WWHL 1.9m, Mon RHoNY @ 9/8c 1.4m, RHoNY 10/9c 1.2m WWHL w/ @jillzarin 1m viewers

— BravoRatings (@BravoRatings) October 16, 2012

Our forecast of 3.3m was almost spot on as in fact 3,306,000 viewers tuned in at 10pm. However despite the drop of 288,000 viewers from the 2nd Reunion the 18-49 demo percentage held at 1.60.

With only next Sunday’s Lost Footage episode left to air the season-to-date averages are as follows: Season 4 Regular Episodes (20) 2,596,600 with the 18-49 Demo percentage of 1.26 (1,598,850 viewers) compared with Season 3 Regular Episodes (19) of 2,583,579 18-49 Demo 1.26%. The 4th Season Reunion Episodes (3) averaged 3,464,333 with 18-49 demo of 1.63% versus Season 3′s Reunions of which there were two episodes, which averaged 3,416,500 but had a higher 18-49 demo of 1.70.

All in all this is a great result for Bravo as RHoNJ more or less maintained its prior season’s ratings with just a small drop in the 18-49 demo. RHoC also achieved this feat when its 7th season aired earlier this year, however pretty much all other returning shows have dropped versus their prior seasons.

At 11pm on Sunday night Andy Cohen had Melissa Gorga in the studio and they was joined by Mario Lopez. Melissa & Mario managed to keep 2,090,000 of RHoNJ’s viewers (18-49 demo of 0.90) hanging around, and given the animosity between Melissa’s and Teresa Giudices’s fans, we’re sure that Teresa’s fans will insist that the ratings were that high because of Mr Lopez’s presence! For comparison, Wendy Williams appeared alone the previous Sunday and although her lead-in was higher (3.6m v 3.3m), her audience was only 1.8m.

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Source: Nielsen Media Research via TVByTheNumbers