The Bachelor: How did Zach Shallcross’ premiere do in the ratings?

Leading into the premiere for The Bachelor last night on ABC, we had seen all sorts of stories writing an obituary for the franchise. There were claims aplenty that the series was done, and that it was suddenly losing relevance as anywhere close to a pop-culture institution. Meanwhile, others claimed that the lead in Zach Shallcross offered little buzz or reasons for excitement.

It’s true today that Monday’s two-hour episode did not set any ratings records, and is also worse than what we saw for Clayton Echard last season. However, some reports of the show’s imminent demise may have been overstated.

Overall, night one of Zach’s journey ended up posting a 0.7 rating in the 18-49 demographic and close to three million viewers watching live. In the demo, the show tied for #1 on the night, and that’s with it down more than 20% from Clayton’s night one. Meanwhile, it was only down slightly from what we saw with Gabby and Rachel’s season of The Bachelorette over the summer.

Like with many other seasons of The Bachelor, it is possible that we will see some of the ratings grow over the course of the next few weeks as buzz starts to grow. Zach’s season started a little bit later than some others in recent memory, so there is a chance that not everyone out there even knew that the show was back. Meanwhile, it’s also very-well possible that there are some people out there who are going to stream the first couple of episodes to save some time.

In our mind, a lot of this depends heavily on the women — we’ve seen over the years that they tend to be the draw more so than the leads as time progresses and things get more dramatic.

Related – Want to know more about what’s ahead on The Bachelor this season?

What did you think of the premiere of The Bachelor with Zach Shallcross, provided you watched?

Be sure to share in the comments! Once you do just that, come back for all sorts of other updates. (Photo: ABC.)

This article was written by Jessica BunBun.