MTV’s The Exhibit Was a Rankings Flop
I do know the finale of MTV and the Smithsonian Channel’s The Exhibit: Discovering the Subsequent Nice Artist aired over per week in the past, however after experiencing my very own nice disappointment with the sequence, I used to be left with a burning query: Who was really watching this present? Was anybody? I would simply be the one particular person nonetheless speaking about The Exhibit, as knowledge from Nielsen Media Firm indicated that many of the present’s episodes stood under six-figures by way of reside viewership upon airing.
Geared up with this knowledge, I got down to see how the fact present ranked compared to two exhibits from a decade previous that would arguably be described as its predecessors: Bravo TV’s personal Gallery Women (2012) and Work of Artwork: The Subsequent Nice Artist (2010–2011). Spoiler alert: Each of them blew The Exhibit out of the water.
The first episode of The Exhibit was essentially the most profitable of your entire season by way of rankings, drawing a whopping ~184,000 viewers for the premiere. Undoubtedly not an important begin, however contemplating the present was afforded the graveyard slot of 10pm on Fridays, it was merely fated to have a low viewership from the get-go. Nonetheless, not even Misha Kahn’s inflatable banana sculpture was sufficient to take care of the viewers’s curiosity because the second episode‘s viewership was down 50%, reaping solely ~92,000 viewers … Yikes.
The following three episodes main as much as The Exhibit’s finale hovered under the six-figure mark, although the fourth episode, which I discovered essentially the most boring out of all of them (and that’s saying one thing), amassed round 95,000 viewers. To my shock, the penultimate episode the place the artists reimagine a previous work had the least variety of viewers throughout the sequence: ~62,000. I suppose I can’t blame the ~33,000 viewers who determined to throw within the towel after the fourth episode that had possessed the joy stage of a hospital ready room.
The Exhibit’s finale broke the six-figure mark with ~111,000 viewers, however that was no fortunate quantity, as that was nonetheless 40% fewer viewers in comparison with the premiere. Sure, that was roughly 111,000 of us who watched and doubtless cringed collectively whereas Kenny Shachter tried to whistle.
Media contacts for The Exhibit haven’t but responded to Hyperallergic‘s request for remark concerning the rankings knowledge supplied by Nielsen.
However, Bravo TV’s 2012 single-season Gallery Women had a median viewership of a minimum of 5 instances that of The Exhibit’s finale episode. Gallery Women, following the careers and private lives of seven ladies of their early-to-mid-twenties working within the artwork world between Manhattan and Brooklyn, premiered with simply over half one million viewers tuning in, in line with Nielsen. That very same variety of viewers caught round for the second episode, and the present maintained a fairly constant viewership with some small dips and jumps. Slotted for Monday nights, Gallery Women was in direct competitors with season 15 of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives on the Meals Community, ABC Household’s Switched at Start, and Oxygen’s The Dangerous Women Membership.
Bravo TV’s Work of Artwork: The Subsequent Nice Artist seems to be the blueprint for The Exhibit contemplating that the latter just about co-opted the subtitle. The stakes of the 2010 present had been practically equivalent to that of The Exhibit: 14 up-and-coming artists compete for a solo present on the Brooklyn Museum and a $100,000 grand prize. The one knowledge obtainable for Work of Artwork’s viewership had been the primary and second season’s common viewers and each of the finales’ whole audiences. The primary season that aired in 2010 had a somewhat constant score of over one million viewers per episode, with the finale garnering practically 1.5 million viewers. The second season was considerably much less profitable general because the present misplaced somewhat over 1 / 4 of its unique viewers, however the season finale rounded out with a beneficiant ~781,000 viewers earlier than Bravo pulled the plug.
So with the premise of The Exhibit copying that of Work of Artwork to a T, why was it so flopular whereas the opposite was in style? Properly, for starters, artists really bought eradicated in Work of Artwork, in order that was most likely an enormous part. Work of Artwork additionally had some extra distinguished “celeb” visitor judges together with artwork critic Jerry Saltz, artist Liz Cohen, photographer Mary Ellen Mark, actor and govt producer Sarah Jessica Parker, and Andres Serrano, identified for his controversial and generally offensive takes.
All in all, the lesson is evident: In case you’re going to repeat off of another person’s sheet, be sure you get it proper otherwise you’ll simply look foolish. At this stage, a second season of the present has not been introduced, thank god.