Kate Gosselin – Kendra WIlkinson success leads to more ‘Celebrity Wife Swap’

While you may complain and be cynical about “Celebrity Wife Swap,” you have to remember this: television is a numbers game first and foremost. If a TV series does well, why in the world would a network not order more episodes? They are in the business of making money first, and then trying to appease some of the snobbier TV viewers around fourth or fifth.

According to a new report from Deadline, ABC has made the decision following an extremely high-rated edition of the reality show featuring Kate Gosselin and Kendra Wilkinson to order three more editions of the series set to air this summer. This brings the total for this summer up to six, as there are also three other episodes remaining from the show’s current order. (The last new episode on schedule for the spring, featuring comedian Gilbert Gottfried and actor Alan Thicke, airs Tuesday.)

In addition to this, episodes of the original “Wife Swap” are going to start airing beginning on March 21 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, largely in order to replace ABC’s short-lived series “Zero Hour.” The network has long viewed this franchise as a sort of fill-in replacement, since it can pull in tolerable ratings without a good bit of advertising effort put into it. So long as it fares better than repeats, the show will almost surely continue to be on the air.

There is no word at the moment on the celebrities that will be appearing on this version of “Wife Swap” in the summer, but we will let you know as soon as some more information comes in.

Are you shocked at all that certain editions of this series are so successful? If you want to also read our take on the Kate-and-Kendra episode, you can do so by visiting the link here.

Photo: ABC