Return of Farrah Abraham gives Teen Mom OG ratings a big boost

Teen Mom OG Executive Producer Morgan J. Freeman explained in an interview back in February that MTV changed their mind about not bringing Farrah Abraham back because “there was a feeling that something was missing.” It seems that fans agree. Teen Mom OG premiered to 1.95 million viewers on March 23, but by episode 2 ratings fell to 1.477 million.

Ratings held steady through the fourth episode, which brought in 1.472 million viewers. The fifth episode was billed as the return of Farrah Abraham, and although she only appeared towards the end of the show, it seems the publicity helped as Episode 5 viewership rose to 1.657 million.

Here is a graph that illustrates the “Farrah Effect.” On the left is the number of viewers (in millions) and along the bottom are the episodes. As mentioned above, Farrah returned in Episode 5:

Farrah’s first full episode the next week saw another sizable uptick as ratings rose to 1.822 million. This week’s episode would seem to indicate the ratings may have plateaued with a very similar, but still very strong, 1.855 million viewers tuning in.

As you probably know, many fans (as well as Farrah’s co-star Maci Bookout) were upset that MTV decided to bring Farrah back, but it is hard to argue with the numbers. Of course, that hasn’t stopped fans from starting a petition to have Farrah removed, a petition signed by just under 8,400 people at the time of this post. Unfortunately, the additional 380,000 viewers will weigh a lot heavier in MTV’s decision making process than 8,400 petition signatures.

You can see Farrah and the rest of the cast of Teen Mom OG (minus Bentley damn it!) on Monday nights at 10/9c on MTV!