‘White Collar’ season 5: Did Matt Bomer’s fame, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ gossip help ratings?
Just like with many other fans, supporters of “White Collar” want to do everything that they can to rally up the support of their favorite show. So what did that entail this week? By saying that despite airing in the fall, the show would do well thanks to the rising star of lead actor Matt Bomer. He’s done a good bit of film and theater work at this point, and in addition to that, he also has been the subject of relentless campaigns to have him play Christian Grey in the upcoming “Fifty Shades of Grey” movie.
But, when the dust settled today and the ratings were revealed for the “White Collar’ premiere, we have to say that there was only a tiny change in the numbers. The 0.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic that the show posted was on par with the finale in March, and most of the second half of season 4, and with 2.53 million viewers, last night’s episode had around 180,000 viewers more.
While this is not enough of a change for anyone to be able to say that talk of Bomer with a whip and his hands alongside the character of Anastasia Steele played much of a role at all, it still has to be considered a win for USA. The network has not fared very well with fall programming versus the big boys, and the show was up against more competition than even in March. In addition to there being “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The Crazy Ones,” “White Collar” also had to take on both the baseball playoffs and an NFL football game. So chalk this one up as a victory for the fans, who managed to keep the numbers the same despite seven months of the show being away.
Also, you have to note here that like all other USA shows, “White Collar” does get a ton of viewership after the fact via DVRs. It’s great that there is such a committed audience watching, though if more of these people watched it live this show could be an enormous smash for the network.
What do you think about the “White Collar” premiere ratings, and what do you attribute them to? Click here if you want to see a preview for next week’s episode, and we will have even more news soon.
Photo: USA
gina
October 23, 2013 @ 7:19 pm
I’m a huge WC fan and frankly, I think there is very little overlap of fifty shades and WC fans. Infact, most of us WC fans don’t want Matt anywhere near the fifty shades disaster. So some may tune in to admire Matt’s beauty but WC and MB is more than that.
Sonny Crockett
October 20, 2013 @ 11:05 pm
We DVR everything TV wise in our house. Interesting now the networks are starting to look at a live plus DVR ratings. For many people DVR watching is the way it is now….
Pauli
October 19, 2013 @ 7:00 pm
White Collar would be even more succesful if they allow Latin America to watch it at the same time. The Premiere’s day all Latinoamericans were watching it by live streaming pages at the same time that USA, even without subtitles, so we didn’t understand much, but we saw it because of Matt…
If they want to get bigger they have to at least let Latinamerica have the same rights as United States have!
Cause here EVERYONE were going crazy trying to catch the right live stream page so we could look at it even without understanding most of their words..
Think about that.
Rhonda
October 19, 2013 @ 6:27 pm
White Collar is hugely successful from a cable perspective. It is also always been in the top 10 time shifter shows which is great. It does this with never ever having and original programming lead in. I love WC but Matt needs to move on, he’s too good for TV. Looking forward to his films.