“Minute to Win It” Debuts Big for GSN; Steve Harvey’s “Feud” Hits Highs
GSN has been having a good deal of ratings success recently due to some very smart acquisitions. Their newest show, the former NBC stunt show Minute to Win It, is another big hit for them. The debut on July 24th maxed out at 540,000 viewers for its 9:00PM ET showing. The next episode at 10:00PM ET lost only 5,000 viewers; it scored 535,000. The rest of the episodes did fine as well. 8:00PM saw 495,000 and 7:00PM saw 396,000 viewers. It kept gaining viewers through the next so people clearly liked what they saw. Congratulations to them on that smart pickup.
We may want to pay attention to MundoFox’s upcoming revival based in Los Angeles. They’ve got a very nice scaled down set, a great host, and a $100,000 format which fits with GSN’s budget. Not only that but the host, Marco Antonio Regil, told us that they’ve discussed a new English-language version if MundoFox’s edition is successful. Depending on how the numbers hold up and all the particulars it may not be a bad idea for GSN to look at this in the future. All the pieces are in place.
Bigger than that, though, was Family Feud. The Steve Harvey edition scored some of the biggest ratings I’ve seen GSN have since Baggage‘s debut. On July 25th Feud saw 715,000 viewers for its 8:30PM slot. That equals a 0.5 rating which is incredibly good for them. All of hits airings do well. Tuesday at 11PM his Feud got 622,000 viewers, Wednesday at 8:00PM got 615,000; at 9:00PM 595,000; and at 9:30PM 577,000. Steve can literally do no wrong with Feud. He saves the syndicated version and brings it massive success and notoriety, and now he’s bringing up GSN’s ratings in a giant way. We don’t praise him for no reason. He really is this good.
Source : Son of the Bronx
These numbers show how badly GSN has really done in the past few years. A 0.5 rating was routine for shows like Whammy, Lingo, High Stakes Poker back in the day.
That is the dirty little secret about GSN’s ratings isn’t it? When I first started watching GSN around 2000 or so, either Alex or The Ricker or somebody mentioned that Lingo was getting around 800,000 viewers almost every episode, and what a big improvement it was. Truthfully, I don’t think the problem is so much on GSN’s side as much as all the cable operators kicking it further and further up the dial, up with the premium sports channels. It used to be channel 64 on my local cable menu. Now it’s 179. I think that really matters to GSN or any network that depends on casual viewers, because not everyone uses the guide function and no one wants to click the up button 100+ times to find something good to watch. That leads to lower ratings, which leads to still worse slotting. It’s like a negative feedback loop.
Wow. Didn’t know this was the case. It almosts reminds me of Russian Roulette. Way ahead of its time, but unfortunately canceled long before it should have been.
Same thing with these ratings. 800k viewers way ahead of GSN’s time, but then dropped down to an average of 300k or less in recent years.
I can say this much though. I have a good feeling about The Pyramid. I think it’s smart for GSN to have gotten back into promoting game shows as actual game shows (see the words “Game Show Network” written under their logo in recent commercials). I think the ratings for The Pyramid will be up in the 700-800k range, if not higher, especially considering that I believe that the main reason GSN essentially went through with creating it was as a tribute to Dick Clark’s passing earlier this year.
If The Pyramid does well, and the other GSN game show ratings hold up (5th Grader, Minute to Win It, Family Feud), then hopefully it will get through to the GSN executives to focus on reviving more game shows in the future.
Outstanding! I gotta hand it to them. They can schedule Feud how they please. Numbers don’t lie.
MTWI debuting strong has to be very comforting to GSN. I hope it stays that way.
Now we’ve gotta hope Pyramid does similar
That’s right! 1.0! 1.0! 1.0! 1.0!
I hope so too. Just think September 3rd Pyramid is going to blow everything out of the water! BOO-YEAH!
And the same thing for a Catch 21 revival on GSN with Steve Harvey in 2013.
Yep! The success of Family Feud on GSN is FUN!
BUT WAIT, THERE’s MORE….
Tune in on Sept 10th for the premiere of the NEW season of Family Feud in HD…
Complete with daily wiener reference?
If there should be an English language version of MtWi, With the same rules as the one on MundoFox, I hope todd newton hosts it.
Oh man! That’d be PERFECT!
I still can’t believe that NBC cancelled it and Fear Factor. It was getting respectable ratings in the summer, just like FF got good ratings in the spring. To me, this is just NBC rolling the dice and throwing as many single-camera sitcoms against the wall as possible and hoping that some stick.
Don’t forget about Howie Mandel’s White Elephant, premiering this Christmas.
Not a big MTWI fan, but at least it’s good to know that they can succeed in weekday prime time with something other than Family Feud.