Great Ratings For “Skin Wars” Debut
Last night’s series premiere of GSN’s new reality show, Skin Wars, was welcomed with opened arms by well over a half-million viewers — 697,000 total viewers to be exact. The series, hosted by Rebecca Romijn, averaged 252,000 viewers among adults 18-49, 128,000 among women 25-54, 124,000 among women 18-49 and 240,000 adults 25-54. Here are a few “by the numbers” figures put this in perspective:
1st: Most-watched telecast for a GSN original series this year among adults 18-49.
2nd: Second most-watched series premiere of a GSN original series behind The American Bible Challenge (1.73 million)
2nd: Debut was the second most-watched telecast for a GSN original series behind the second season finale of The Chase (818,000)
4: Outperformed the prior four weeks with Harvey’s Family Feud airing in same time slot (+64% W25-54, +68% W18-49, +98% A25-54, +150% A18-49, +160% M25-54, +370% M18-49, +43% total viewers)
52%: Increase in total viewers compared to the year-to-date average network viewership in the 9-10pm time slot
I will admit, prior to the premiere, I honestly did not care much for this show. I thought (and to some extent, still think) it would be another one-hit wonder by GSN because I didn’t think it would catch on and become widely successful like The American Bible Challenge did. After hearing about the show's great start along with GSN’s Door 3 producing an after-show spinoff series, Skin Wars has a good shot of making it through to another season.
"Let’s Ask America" To Premiere on GSN August 18
GSN has recently announced through an advanced release of their August 18-22 schedule that it will begin airing the second season episodes of Let’s Ask America with former host Kevin Pereria. The network will air the show twice during the weekdays from 12:00pm-1:00pm EDT beginning the Monday after next. The doubleheader will replace the Shop ’Til You Drop airings that currently occupy the time slot.
This is a surprising and good pickup by GSN to not only add the much-needed variety within the schedule that’s currently plagued with endless reruns of Karn/O’ Hurley/Harvey episodes of Family Feud, but to also find out how well the series will perform on the network before the third season shows hit the airwaves in 2015. This will also give a lot of viewers to view Let’s Ask America for the very first time since the show has been airing in select test markets for first two seasons. Get your DVRs set for August 18 at noon and 12:30pm on GSN.
"Celebrity Name Game" Stars Revealed
It looks like the stage is set for Celebrity Name Game to premiere in syndication September 22. The name association game show will be hosted by former Late Late Show (now hosted by British comedian James Corden) host Craig Ferguson and will have contestants teaming with celebrity guest stars to play a four-round game for a chance to win up to $20,000. The series, executive produced by Courteney Cox and David Arquette, will debut across more than 93% of the nation including the Top 50 U.S. markets. Here is the list of guest stars scheduled to appear in the first season of Celebrity Name Game:
David Arquette
Tom Arnold
Yvette Nicole Brown
Dan Bucatinsky
Cheryl Burke
Courteney Cox
Peter Facinelli
Vivica A. Fox
Billy Gardell
Ana Gasteyer
Tony Hale
Chris Kattan
Lisa Kudrow
Jane Leeves
Kevin McHale
Joely Fisher
Jim O’Heir
Cheri Oteri
Will Sasso
Nev Schulman
Karina Smirnoff
Nicole Sullivan
Mena Suvari
Scott Wolf
Constance Zimmer
I would have loved it if CBS were to pick up this show, as originally planned, to see this series go head-to-head against NBC’s Hollywood Game Night, whose end game is similarly named “Celebrity Name Game”. At any rate, until the premiere, check out this sizzle reel of the upcoming game show.
Sources: Game Show Follies, The Futon Critic, TV Media Insights
If Skin Wars does well, then GSN will end up producing more reality shows. Which will lead to the network's doom.
ReplyDeleteGSN is probably hoping Let's Ask America will be the next Family Feud. They hope the Bill Bellamy version will be the next Harvey Feud (they will air it everywhere). They hope the Kevin Pereira version will be the next Karn/O'Hurley Feud (they will air it in the early afternoon and might move to primetime and weekends in the future).
Most of the celebrities in Celebrity Name Game I've never heard of. We'll see how the show does.
People have been predicting GSN's doom since, well, GSN debuted. Somehow the doomed network keeps rolling along. 2013 was its most watched year, in fact. The network did have a near-death experience in 2000-01, but now it seems much better established.
ReplyDeleteScripps had previously announced that the Bellamy eps of Let's Ask America would debut on GSN in January. Not sure why they decided to get the Pereira eps on the network this month. The show is only cleared in about a third of the country for its third season starting September 8, so maybe Scripps hopes to drum up some interest.