It’s been a full week since Viacom’s contract with DIRECTV ran out without the two sides being able to negotiate a new one, resulting in DIRECTV blacking out all Viacom programming for their subscribers. One of MTV’s tent pole series, Teen Mom, made it just under the gun last week as the show’s fourth episode of its fourth and final season ended just an hour before the midnight deadline. Many were curious just what the impact would be on the ratings this week, and the results are pretty brutal.
After finishing with 2.079 million viewers last week, the ratings plummeted to just 1.531 million last night – a difference of more than 26 percent! That number is even higher than some of the more pessimistic projections which were mostly based on DIRECTV accounting for around 20% of MTV’s viewership. (I confess, I have DIRECTV and was forced to make arrangements last night so I could watch it.)
One major fan that also missed out on the telecast, making Twitter a substantially less enjoyable place from 10-11 EST, was Jenelle Evans’ mom Barbara Evans! @BabsEvansMTV (a parody account) shared this angry tweet last night:
The results were a little better, but still not good, for one of MTV’s premiere scripted programs, Teen Wolf, which fell from 1.719 million viewers to 1.327 million Monday night – a drop of 23 percent. Surprisingly, MTV’s other successful scripted series, Awkward, weathered the storm amazingly well! Last Thursday’s episode had 1.715 million viewers, which was only 45,000 less than the week before!
Snooki & JWoww dropped from 2.037 million viewers to 1.700 million, a 16.5 percent drop – which is relatively healthy considering.
VH1 programming seemed to fluctuate right around negative 20 percent as well with Single Ladies falling 23 percent from 2.498 million the previous Monday to 1.933 million this week, and their hugely popular reality series Love & Hip Hop Atlanta going from 3.398 million to 2.690 overall viewers (-20.8 percent).
Talks are reportedly ongoing between Viacom and DIRECTV, but there appears to be no imminent resolution to the blackout in sight.
So, Sophia, what do you think about this whole mess?
