‘The Bachelor’ Spoilers: Why Did the Matt James Premiere Garner the Lowest Ratings In Franchise History?

‘The Bachelor’ spoilers have found that Matt James is everything a Bachelor lead should be. He’s tall, handsome, well-spoken, accomplished and rocks an 8-pack you could scrub laundry on. So why aren’t the ratings reflecting this?

ABC execs have a few theories as to why Matt James’ season of The Bachelor has had a bit of a false start, the first being that 29-year-old James is brand new to the franchise.

This year producers bucked the tradition of choosing a popular contestant from a previous season to take over the lead role. Because of that, audiences were not yet invested in James or his quest to find love.

‘The Bachelor’ Spoilers: Why did Matt James Bachelor premier had lowest ratings in franchise history?

“I actually think you’re going to see ratings rise more exponentially than you would during previous seasons because people are going to start talking about it and word-of-mouth is going to kick in,” says ABC executive Robert Mills.

Millsy may have a point there. Even though the overnight audiences have been under 5 million during the past weeks, the show continues to be a Twitter phenomenon, continuously trending on Monday nights as fans tweet their thoughts throughout the primetime broadcast.

Another reason ratings are down could simply be because of Bachelor fatigue. Season 25 of The Bachelor followed directly after Season 16 of the Bachelorette which was almost split into two seasons itself. James is now the third lead we’ve seen as the Bachelor franchise has been seen continuously on our screens since early October last year.

The Covid pandemic hasn’t given the show much of an assist either as there cannot be any exotic locations to showcase in lieu of flimsy storylines or out-of-this-world dates to conceal dull personalities.

‘The Bachelor’ Spoilers: But let’s talk the elephant in the room here. Race.

It can’t be a coincidence that 2017’s season 13 had the lowest ratings of any Bachelorette season when Rachel Lindsay, the first black lead in Bachelor franchise history, took the starring role. Lindsay’s turn at the helm did spark a 72% jump in black viewership for ABC’s reality series, however.

The Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss was troubled by Lindsay’s season’s ratings taking a dip, indicating the trend in viewership was, indeed, connected to race. “I found it incredibly disturbing in a Trumpish kind of way,” Fleiss told the New York Times back in 2018. “How else are you going to explain the fact that she’s down in the ratings, when — black or white — she was an unbelievable Bachelorette? It revealed something about our fans.”

But these are the same fans who have demanded to see more BIPOC contestants and leads on the dating show, right? Yes and no.

“We are widening our audience, and that’s for the better,” Mills says. “‘The Bachelor’ is dominant in younger demos, certainly among 18-34, and if you look at that generation, they’re much more enlightened. You’re seeing many more younger people’s stories being told that are relevant. So, if we happen to be aging out because people don’t want to see more diversity, well then, they’re missing out and they’re going to out of the demo soon anyway.”

So while there may be a minor fumble in the ratings at this moment, it seems ABC is in it for the long haul and keeping the younger audiences happy.

“It will certainly allow the franchise to have a much longer lifespan,” Mills concluded.

With already two decades worth of love and roses and drama and champagne under its belt, it doesn’t look like The Bachelor franchise, with it’s much more diverse casting, is going anywhere. And this writer (who just might be ‘aging’ out of the target demographic) is pretty darned pleased to hear it.

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Matt JamesMike FleissRachel LindsayRobert MillsThe Bachelor
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