Remember Vanderpump Rules, then the Bravo reality show about a bunch of millennial West Hollywood waiters and bartenders hard at work in a restaurant owned by a wealthy British lady with a raincoat dog? The series premiered on January 7, 2013. The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in which the actor Lisa Vanderpump, a former actress and now a successful entrepreneur in Los Angeles. The show is instantly memorable for its unique entry into reality TV annals, and its premiere episode literally bleeds from the end. real housewives episode. Brandi GlanvilleA Beverly Hills the cast exits the car at the end of this show’s episode and enters Vanderpump’s Sur restaurant, where she confronts the server. Sheana Shay about Shay’s affair with Glanville’s ex-husband, an actor Eddie Cibrian. Voila! Vanderpump Rules starts.
The show was an immediate hit and was watched by 1.5 million viewers. Using the adultery scandal as its entry into the Bravo programming lineup, the series became one of the network’s biggest hits, earning good ratings from 18 to 49. group of seniors and offers an option for viewers who wanted their weekly drama to be catered for (pun intended) by actors under 50 who lived in tiny apartments on Santa Monica Boulevard rather than sprawling mansions in the Hollywood Hills.
Scam partners make ‘Vanderpump Rules’ a hit
For the first few seasons, stories of cheating partners propelled the show and kept people watching. First there was a shabby mixologist Jax Taylorwho, in the startling finale of the first season, confessed to cheating on an old girlfriend Stassi Schroeder with Schroeder’s best friend Kristen Doat. Then, in the show’s second season, Dout turned the tables on her when the bartender’s boyfriend Tom Sandoval decided he’d rather mix drinks with a new actor Ariana Madix. To keep up in the disloyalty department, the show’s fifth season sees Taylor once again betray a new lead character. Brittany Cartwright bending sheets with Sur server Vera Stowers. It seemed that as long as at least one of the actors was engaged in hack work with someone other than their assigned partner, Vanderpump Rules would continue to rule the reality TV kingdom.
But as the show’s cast have matured, their antics in bed have slowed down a bit. Jax married a woman he once cheated on and bought a house in Valley Village. Tom and Ariana swore love exclusively to each other and moved into the same suburban apartment complex as Jax. Even the show is cute, clumsy Tom Schwartz finally put a ring on the finger of a career bride Kathy Maloney. Suddenly, Vanderpump Rules no more about overgrown teenagers messing up their romantic lives in between delivering goat cheese balls to the tables of Sur’s hungry customers. Now it was the worst thing possible in terms of a reality show - boring.
As of 2021, the show was drawing in just over 600,000 viewers per episode, with numbers increasing here and there from time to time. When COVID shut down national restaurants, Vanderpump Rules completely lost anchor and barely moved forward. With restrictions eased due to the pandemic, the show has entered its tenth season, but by now, viewers, like Bravo itself, have largely lost interest. The show had little to no promotion on the network, and after only five episodes, the series had the lowest ratings ever, with only 648,000 viewers. It was almost a foregone conclusion that season 10 would be the series’ last. That is, until the secret weapon Vanderpump Rules‘ success was unleashed again. Recently it became known that Tom Sandoval left his girlfriend Ariana with the actor. Raquel Lewis. And just like that Vanderpump Rules once again water cooler television. The show received its highest ratings of the season when the first episode aired after news of the cheating scandal drew 879,000 viewers. In the week following the news, some of the most popular words on Twitter were “Raquel”, “PumpRules”, “Sandoval” and “Ariana”. Bravo host Andy Cohen also confirmed that even though filming for the season was completed before the case was solved, the cameras for the show turned back on last week to capture the aftermath in all their harrowing glory. Thanks to infidelity, those crazy LA kids are back, baby!
Infidelity Means Big Ratings for Reality TV
It is not simple Vanderpump Rules which thrives on storylines about unfaithful shenanigans. In fact, there are plenty of reality shows where plots involving devoted lovers have capitalized on, and this is actually the only topic that is guaranteed to rank high for the “documentary soap” genre. Look no further than Vanderpump Rulesraw material, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. In the first season, the cast Camille Grammer was sold by her husband fraser star Kelsey Grammer for the younger version. As viewers watched the couple’s marriage fall apart, Bravo saw the show’s ratings rise. The show became the second highest rated series of the first season. real housewives franchise for all demographics, averaging 2.42 million viewers. Just a short drive down I-5, The Real Housewives of Orange CountyX David Beador was busy eating potato chips in front of his wife Shannon and goofing around behind her back during the show’s 10th season, making this installment of the franchise the sixth highest-rated cable television program in the week of October 26, 2015. Meanwhile, on the other side of the map, the Countess Louanne de Lesseps from The Real Housewives of New York showed viewers that money can’t buy class or a reliable husband when the show’s eighth season ended with the revelation that her fiancé, Tom D’Agostinowas caught having an affair with someone without royal title. Ratings for the season were up 20% from previous years, helping Bravo end 2016 with the biggest on-air and digital growth of the top 10 ad-supported cable entertainment networks.
From the ‘lower deck’ to the Kardashians, hoax makes reality TV thrive
Cheating stories are not limited to dining ladies from Real housewives. The popular series Bravo about the life of the crew members of a luxury yacht, below deckalso received a big jump in the ratings in 2015 when the show drew admiration and devotion to the boatswain, Eddie Lucas, joined a crazy colleague Rocky Dakota do more than just fold towels in the laundry room. Caught in the act, Lucas initially denied wrongdoing, but eventually came to terms with his lapse in professional and moral judgment. The incident cost Lucas his relationship with the woman he left behind as well as the respect of his peers, but it paid off for Bravo. The episode “Laundry Boom Boom” received 1.17 million viewers, making it the 25th highest rated TV program on October 13, 2015.
And of course there’s a scam show on cable TV Keep up with the Kardashians. In its fifteenth season, the show, about a family that never says no to the camera or the cosmetic surgeon, began to get stale, and its ratings reflected that fact. Then in November 2018 NBA player Tristan Thompsonbasketball Mr. Khloe KardashianHer eye, and the father of her child, was exposed as a fraud, causing a ratings jump for the show, which drew 1.4 million viewers. Just two seasons ago, little sister Courtney faced infidelity issues herself when she caught her partner, a professional blazer wearer Scott Disickdoing it in Dubai with another woman. The two-part episode received great acclaim for E! network, making it the third highest rated cable program in the last week of May 2017.
While cable networks seem like a hotbed of, shall we say, bedroom antics, they certainly don’t have a patent for shows that feature travel-hungry couples. Take, for example, the alphabet Bachelor in Paradise, a series that places already overheated singles in overheated tropical locations and practically says, “We dare you not to mess around and mess this up.” In the eighth season of the series, two singles, filmed on camera, Victoria Fuller And Johnny DeFillipofound love among Mexico’s palm fronds - that is, until Victoria found new love among discarded leaves, a touchy subject touched on in the show’s November 2022 reunion episode. This particular episode drew 2.5 million viewers, up 11% from the previous week. Who said scammers never succeed?
Where there are scammers, there are big ratings
These reality shows were certainly not the first to acknowledge the ratings sweet spot that can result from a bit of covert action. It actually started back in 2000 with scammers, a gonzo-style reality show whose sole purpose was to catch lechers in the act and capture the hysterical and sometimes violent aftermath. This program, hosted by the fearless Joey Greco, aired in syndication for 16 years, and episodes of the show can still be found on late-night television. But for now scammers was exactly what its title said, there’s something sweeter about shows like Vanderpump Rules or real housewives where the deception becomes an unexpected plot twist rather than the plot itself. And this is, in no small part, the reason why these turns tend to jump the audience over the high bar.
Viewers don’t jump into a reality show just to watch actors wear designer purses or sit at trendy restaurant tables and ogle watercress salads. No, audiences want big, bad things, and it can’t be much bigger or worse than adultery, betrayal, and twofold. For better or worse, the deception turns on the TVs, and it seems, at least for a while, thanks to Tom and Raquel’s rude romp, Vanderpump Rules Cable television will again dominate.
Source: Collider
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