Would The Bachelor ratings be higher if Peter Kraus was leading man?
One of the things that we’ve long said at CarterMatt is that, by and large, the star of the season is fairly irrelevant given that viewers, for the most part, watch for the sake of the drama. Yet, this time around the presence of Arie Luyendyk Jr. really isn’t doing much to move the ratings needle, and there are certainly many questions as to why.
So far, this season of The Bachelor is averaging a 1.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic; while good, this is still down 30% from Nick Viall’s season average. Viall, meanwhile, was almost even to the numbers of Ben Higgins’ season, whose numbers were just about the same as Chris Soules’ season before that. Soules’ season was down about 10% from the one starring Juan Pablo Galavis, which was actually a ratings high point for the franchise despite the fact that he was a terrible lead.
Basically, what the Juan Pablo ratings really showed was that if you have a trainwreck season, at least you are doing something right. With Arie’s season, however, “disengaged” is probably the right word to use in order to describe it. There is not really all that much of an incentive to get invested in this guy’s story. He has not been on television in five years, there isn’t much depth to him beyond his job, and it doesn’t feel like any of his conversations are altogether special.
We do blame Arie in part for the ratings slide, but to a certain extent we also blame the cast. There is no Alexis the wannabe dolphin trainer in a shark costume; meanwhile, there is no Corinne-level personality or Ashley S. who is there for the cheesy comedy. The cast this season has a couple of standouts, but also some pretty boring contenders and women like Krystal and Chelsea who are hard to root for based on the edit but not necessarily fun villains. This is a season to date with a weak lead and one of the weaker casts in a while. We do think the ratings will rise slightly before the finale — they often do with this show.
Would the ratings be better with Peter Kraus?
To a certain extent, yes. We think we’d probable be at a 1.7 or 1.8 rating so far this season. Peter was relevant and well-liked on Rachel Lindsay’s season and appealed so much more to the younger generation of Bachelor fans. Granted, he wasn’t interested — what can ABC do to force a guy to do a show he doesn’t want to do? It’s just an interesting thought experiment. We do still think ABC would have remained plagued with the casting problem, and the timing of this season has not helped. Remember that the show premiered on New Year’s Day and the second show aired opposite the NCAA title game. That’s tough competition.
Often, the internet lacks nuance — we don’t think that adding Peter instead of Arie makes this season as enormous a success as some online probably do, but we do think he moves the needle more than Arie.
What do you think about these new Bachelor ratings? Be sure to share right now in the attached comments! Also, you can like CarterMatt on Facebook in the event you want some more news regarding the series. (Photo: ABC.)