Could this spell the beginning of the end for the Kardashians' reign of all reality television? According to the Daily Mail, the recent season premiere of Keeping Up With the Kardashians pulled in the lowest ratings in years, and was down about half a million viewers compared to last season's premiere. Yikes.
Here are the official numbers from The Wrap:
The two Season 9 debut episodes of “KUWTK” averaged 2.4 million total viewers on Sunday and Monday. It also rated high in all key demos: 1.57 million were in the advertiser-coveted Adults 18-49, 1.21 million viewers were Women 18-49, 1.08 million were Adults 18-34 and 846,000 viewers were in the Women 18-34 demo. Those numbers represent a more than 40 percent increase over last season’s fall premiere episode across key demos.
Compare that to the numbers from the season eight premiere, which averaged about 3.22 million viewers, and it's clear there was definitely major loss between this past summer's viewership and the current viewership.
So, what happened? Are people just finally sick of the Kardashians and ready to let them all fade into obscurity? Probably not — Kim is still, after all, engaged to Kanye West, and Khloe's relationship drama with Lamar Odom did a lot to keep her a tabloid fixture for a while. Then, there are all those rumors about Bruce Jenner wanting to become a woman, of course. In other words, there's a lot of gossip about this family, so it's unlikely they'll ever really fade away.
What it's too early to tell, however, is if the numbers will continue to drop — it's just the first episode of the season, after all, so there's always a chance we'll see an uptick in viewership next week.
In terrible news: Apparently, E!'s new reality show about rich white kids called #RichKids of Beverly Hills is doing well in ratings, and averaged about 5.5 million viewers total over both Sunday and Monday when episodes aired. Ugh.
