Love it or loathe it reality TV is here to stay. High ratings mixed with low production costs equals a go to format when you’re looking to fill out your programming. Also a potential casting pool of 7+ billion, is handy. The Real Housewives franchise has been around since 2006 and led to many different spin-offs and lookalikes. The latest edition is #RHOAKL and is difficult to avoid considering this has been the flagship of the new Bravo channel. And for fans like myself, it has yet to disappoint. Lots of awkwardness, bitching, backstabbing and weirdly staged situations.
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In the TV ratings department, figures are “neither groundbreaking nor dire” and #RHOAKL did win the timeslot among the key 25-54 year old female demographic. So all in all a moderate success for the franchise if it can maintain the momentum.
But why would you want to be on a reality show? Fame, greed, insecurity, ego, there are plenty of reasons, but exposure often tops the list. Angela Stone of Christchurch described herself recently as a brand. What else does a brand desire more than exposure? And how better to do that than to be broadcast into people’s homes where they can judge, mock, adore you but most importantly get to know you?
Does it translate? There are several success stories of the crossover from reality star to mainstream success. The most notable being Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton. Bethenny Frankel managed to turn her stint in The Real Housewives of New York not only into her own chat show, but also a popular cocktail company called Skinnygirl which she sold for an estimated USD$100 million.
So how are the Real Housewives of Auckland doing? It’s still early on in the game but if you check out Google Trends we get some interesting insight. One of the major arcs at the beginning of this season is the rivalry between the perma-smiling Angela Stone, and the *bleep* Gilda Kirkpatrick (I still don’t know why the producers won’t reveal what the bleep was… if anyone knows please get in touch). As you can in googling terms Glida is winning so far…
As you can see from the graph above, that spike is the day after episode one was aired, with a steep drop off, but still a notable increase in google organic traffic. This is the search on the reality stars themselves but how about their respective companies? I would show you the graph but looking at 0 movements isn’t interesting. It looks like this _________.
Maybe the most sobering piece of data I managed to gather is this graph below:
After just 4 episodes, the initial spark of interest seems to have waned, and the ladies of the real housewives, aren’t quite getting the traffic that maybe they were expecting. But again this is early days, and the drama may only escalate, who knows where this season will go? And who really knows what goals they had in mind when signing up for the show? I’m sure we will get plenty more chances for Anne to say ‘Pussy’ and for Michelle to make us feel sad. Reality TV is a potential marketing goldmine for anyone brave enough to jump into the fray and engage with the horrors of tabloid journalism and the rest that comes along with living your life on people’s screens. Who’s going to come out on top? The audience, it’s always the audience.
