Former Teen Mom 2 couple Cole and Chelsea DeBoer made their return to cable television this week — on another channel and with a whole new show. The couple’s HGTV home makeover show Down Home Fab premiered Monday night, and there were A LOT of people watching!
According to Showbuzz Daily, the series premiere episode brought in 678,000 viewers Monday night. That was nearly equal to the lead-in, which was a 2021 episode of Fixer Upper: Welcome Home that had 711,000 viewers.
In retrospect, Chelsea’s departure from MTV and the Teen Mom franchise seems very well timed! As we’ve reported several times over the past couple years, ALL of the Teen Mom shows are seriously struggling in the ratings, and all of the shows from the franchise seems to be drying up and combining into Teen Mom: The Next Chapter and Teen Mom: Family Reunion.
The latest season of Family Reunion premiered on January 3, and this week featured the infamous grandma brawl that has been hyped online for months. Despite the hype, the “Double Mama Drama” episode brought in just 274,000 viewers — way less than half of the number of Down Home Fab viewers!
Making matter worse for Teen Mom: Family Reunion is that all three episodes so far have decreased in the ratings. The January 3 premiere had 330,000 viewers, and the second episode dropped to 309,000. Then 274,000 this week. That’s a 17% drop (56,000 viewers) in two weeks!
It’s important to note that Family Reunion did beat Down Home Fab in viewers aged 18-49, which is what advertisers care the most about. In that category, Family Reunion has fluctuated between .13 and .15 while the Down Home Fab premiere got a .10 rating.
It’s also important to note that Down Home Fab was available to stream on discovery+ all day Monday prior to the premiere airing, and that viewership is not reflected in the Nielsen ratings quoted above. Currently, I don’t believe Family Reunion is available to stream on any platform prior to the episodes airing.
Regardless of all the ratings comparisons and jargon, 678,000 viewers for the show’s premiere episode without a major lead-in seems like a huge success to me! Plus, I watched the show and it was REALLY good! I encourage you all to give it a shot!
Now, let’s see if Down Home Fab can improve on those numbers for Episode 2, which airs Monday night at 9/8c on HGTV. Or, you can stream the episode early on discovery+.
UPDATE – Down Home Fab Episode 2 was up more than 25% to 850,000 viewers! Plus, it was up from .10 to .17 in the all-important 18-49 demographic, which was second only to Below Deck among non-sports and non-news shows on cable Monday night! Wow!
Asa Hawks is a writer and editor for Starcasm. You can contact Asa via Twitter, Facebook, or email at starcasmtips(at)yahoo.com
