‘Shahs of Sunset’ season 2 sets series high; ‘Real Housewives of Atlanta’ improves

For those of you who were questioning Bravo’s decision to move “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” and “Shahs of Sunset” to earlier times (and we were one of them), Andy Cohen was now laughing at you. After all, the latter show in particular is now really getting set up to be a flagship show on the network for years to come.

The first-ever “Shahs of Sunset” episode airing at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time this past Sunday scored a series-high viewership of 2.5 million total viewers, and it did so on a night where there actually was some considerable competition. Not only Were there new episodes of both “The Good Wife” and “Revenge,” but this was also at a time in which “Downton Abbey” was mowing down competition over at PBS. Somehow, Reza Farahan and company have done an incredible job at carving a little niche out for themselves in this timeslot, and they continue to deliver time and time again. While there is no accurate 18-49 figure available at this time, the show is up over 60% in the demo from this same episode during season 1.

As for “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” the most-popular installment in the franchise also drew a season high in viewers with 3.7 million people tuning in. While this is not the same sort of extraordinary figure that we have seen on the show in the past, it does prove that there is life this franchise even before 9:00 p.m. Eastern (which is probably something that Bravo was interested in knowing).

Do you think that “Shahs of Sunset” is starting to be poised to become a smash hit for the network? If you want to read a review of the latest episode, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: Bravo