I guess when you’ve been in the slammer you learn to take things as they come without getting too high or too low. This is certainly the case with domestic diva Martha Stewart as she has faced brutal ratings for her show since her daring move to the Hallmark Channel on September 13th. The premiere Hallmark episode of The Martha Stewart Show only garnered an average of 199,000 viewers which was down %75 from last year’s syndicated premiere.
Hallmark has long been in the ratings basement depending mostly on Golden Girl reruns and original movies. It has earned the unwelcome nickname of the Little House on the Prairie channel for its seemingly never ending broadcast of reruns from that classic show. But none of this seems to faze Stewart as she becomes the new face of the network. She stated recently that:
“Compelling programming always wins out, and we are working very hard — in the magazines, on Twitter, on blogs, in advertising — to tell everybody where they can find us.”
On the September 15th episode of The Marth Stewart Show on Hallmark she gave her viewers a taste of this compelling programming by heading out on the town in L.A. with two MTV reporters, Brendan Kennedy and Jim Cantiello, whom she had met while eating at Co, one of her favorite pizza restaurants. During this outing she gets her drink on at a popular bar called Dram and discusses passing out on gin at Yale and Don Draper among other things. All of this together combined with a buzzing Martha does equal compelling TV!
Here is the clip of Martha out with her new hip geekster BFFs Brendan and Jim tossing a few back:
I don’t think Laura “Half Pint” Ingalls ever had a kyperinia in that little house on the prairie or openly discussed a deep passion for big round balls! When Martha starts riffing on Mad Men and knowing several “Don Drapers” back in her modeling days she really is on a roll. I had never considered it before but I would now have to put Martha Stewart way up on my list of people I’d love to have a few drinks with.
Actually this isn’t the only alcohol themed headline for Martha lately as she had to defend some random tweets she made by stating that she was not drunk while making them. Following these bizarre tweets involving numerous typos etc., people started implying with their own tweets that Stewart was drunk at the time but she quelled those rumors with the following:
The Hallmark Channel is going all the way with Martha by putting all their eggs in one of her well though out and hand woven baskets. With up to 8 hours daily of Martha Stewart based programming it looks like the two Americana traditions have their TV fates tied together. For more info on the Martha Stewart Show you can check out the Hallmark Channel’s official website here.
Top Photo: REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
