Ratings: ‘The Bachelor’ with Juan Pablo Galavis rises vs. Sean Lowe’s premiere

Here is something that we definitely did not see coming from Monday night’s ratings battle: “The Bachelor” actually proving itself to be more popular when it comes to live programming than many recent editions of the franchise.

Despite its star in Juan Pablo Galavis being on a pretty boring and lesser-viewed season in “The Bachelorette”, the two-hour official premiere raked in a rating of 2.7 in the 18-49 demo and well over 8 million viewers. This rating is a good four-tenths higher than the very popular season starring Sean Lowe last year, and three tenths more than the season from two years ago featuring Ben Flajnik. It is also higher slightly than the premieres of “The Bachelorette” with Emily Maynard or Desiree Hartsock, and you have to go back to Brad Womack’s second stint in 2011 for a premiere that got off to a better start.

So what was it that made so many people catch Juan Pablo fever? We see it starting off with the fact that he is the first “Bachelor” to not just be another white dude, which may have brought in more Latino viewers and also viewers in different geographic parts of the country. There may have also even been more of a fascination among the show’s casual fanbase who may not have watched at times.

Another possible factor? The polar vortex, which despite sounding like either a subtitle for a bad video game or a new slushie drink at Sonic, forced everyone to stay indoors with the heat on. So many people may have just been bored, and looking for something to take their mind off of the fact that they really cannot go outside and do anything.

It will be interesting to see how the ratings hold up in the weeks ahead, especially near the end of the season when the show actually competes against “The Voice.” That did not happen last year thanks to the singing show starting a little later than it will this time around.