NBC - JON AND KATE PLUS 9.8 MILLION VIEWERS

JON AND KATE PLUS 9.8 MILLION VIEWERS

Partly explaining how struggling NBC wound up Monday night with the most viewers on the broadcast networks, it now turns out that the top-rated show of the night was not on broadcast television at all -- but on cable. TLC's 75-minute reality show Jon and Kate Plus 8 recorded 9.8 million viewers, 4 million of whom were women 18-49, the target demographic for for the channel. Viewership was boosted by a slew of tabloid articles about the alleged marital infidelities of the couple featured on the show, Jon and Kate Gosselin, the parents of eight children. Today's (Wednesday) Los Angeles Times observed that TLC had been in the "awkward position" of trying not to appear that it was exploiting the free publicity. "The network had to rethink how to shoot the pilot to address all the attention, and the episode was literally in production just hours before its premiere Monday night," the newspaper reported. Alan Sepinwall, the TV columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger observed, "TLC needs people to believe in the Gosselins as a functional, albeit bickering, couple for the show's cute, aspirational schtick to work." TLC is not the only one betting on the Gosselins. Celebrity magazines have reported an uptick in sales every time the couple and their children are featured. Their book, Multiple Bles8ings , has sold a stunning 272,000 copies in seven months. But David Hinkley commented in the New York Daily News , "It's hard to see how Monday night's sad, uncomfortable dance will create the kind of long-term television viewers really want to follow. ... "Watching an actual relationship deteriorate -- the cold silence, the simmering resentment, the little cruelties -- that's not much fun. And not very good television." However, Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik noted "I suspect the prospect of seeing a marriage crack up brick by brick in front of your eyes is just the kind of reality-TV 'pleasure' that might keep some viewers tuning in week after week this season -- and some of the advertisers paying top cable dollar to be part of it. But not me."

27/05/2009