NBC's For Love Or Money 3 rebounded in the ratings with its second episode, gaining nearly a million additional viewers and defeating the highly-touted premiere of reality titan Mark Burnett's new The Casino series in their first head-to-head showdown.
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According to Nielsen ratings figures reported by Daily Variety, NBC's one-hour Monday 9PM broadcast of For Love Or Money 3's second episode fared significantly better than the previous week's two-hour debut episode, drawing 7.15 million overall viewers and a 3.1/8 rating/share in the Adults 18-49 demographic. While the show still finished a distant second behind the 11 million plus viewers who tuned in to watch CBS' Everybody Loves Raymond and Two and a Half Men repeats, the performance represented a considerable jump from the 6.3 million viewers and 2.6/7 Adults 18-49 rating/share averaged by last week's premiere episode.
Airing without the hindrance of either an ABC Sports NHL or NBA finals game broadcast, For Love Or Money 3 handily won the hour's three-way reality programming showdown, defeating both the premiere of FOX's The Casino (5.80 million viewers, 2.6/7 in Adults 18-49) and the series finale of The WB's Superstar USA (4.24 million viewers, 1.9/5 in Adults 18-49), although it did place third to Casino in Men 18-49.
While it doesn't appear as though the third installment of the series will be the big summer hit for NBC that last summer's initial edition of the series was (instead it's looking like an apparently revitalized Last Comic Standing will fill that role), taking the fragmented reality viewership base into account, For Love Or Money 3's second episode performance does appear to indicate that the series is likely to perform at levels similar to last summer's first For Love Or Money sequel. For Love Or Money 2 drew 8.2 million overall viewers and 3.5/10 Adults 18-49 rating during its premiere before slowly building to a September finale which attracted over 12 million viewers. The performance placed last summer's two For Love Or Money finales as the summer's two top-ranked Adults 18-49 non-sports broadcasts.