Ratings: NBC’s ‘Ready for Love’ debuts low; ‘Hart of Dixie’ season 2 steady

Over the course of the past decade, we’ve really learned one thing about dating shows on primetime network TV: unless you have “The Bachelor(ette)” in your title, you are probably not going to do very well. Just look at the terrible performance of the CBS show “3” last summer, which was canceled before making it past three episodes.

Despite all of NBC’s hype surrounding “Ready for Love,” and even giving it the coveted timeslot after “The Voice,” the show still found a way to flop. Despite its lead-in of a 4.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic, the Eva Longoria production drew just a 1.6 rating, and less than 4 million viewers. Given the buzz online, we’re not sure if we expect even this number for the second episode last week.

Basically, “Ready For Love” fared worse leading out of the show than either “Go On” or “The New Normal” did in the past month, and this is with this show being a premiere (which generally leads to more curious people checking it out). Our recommendation? That NBC makes sure to put a more ambitious show similar to what they did with “Revolution” on Mondays.

“The Voice” was actually down somewhat this week thanks to the return of “NCIS,” which posted a season-low 2.6 rating that was actually even with “NCIS: Los Angeles” (proving that the singing competition caused some viewers to drift away).

Perhaps the biggest winner on the night to us was “Hart of Dixie.” Despite being off the air for a month, the CW drama returned with a 0.6 rating that was even with its last new episode, and pretty much guarantees that a season 3 will be coming up given that no other show save for the ones airing on Wednesday or Thursday night performs this well.

What do you think about some of these numbers? If you want to read our full review for this week’s “Hart of Dixie,” you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: NBC