The second episode of NBC's Average Joe drew decent ratings for the evening of Monday, November 10, ranking third in its highly competitive time period (airing versus CBS' CSI: Miami and ABC's Monday Night Football), however in a potentially ominous development, the broadcast drew significantly fewer viewers than last week's premiere episode.
ADVERTISEMENT
According to updated in-home viewing figures from Nielsen Media Research, the second episode of the six episode reality series drew a 4.6/12 rating/share in the Adults 18-49 demographic and 9.3 million viewers overall.
While the program is still drawing 15 percent above the NBC's 18-49 season average in the hour t before Joe's arrival and the episode did increase its 18-49 rating by 0.7 of a rating point from its first half-hour to its second, when compared with the previous week's premiere numbers, the drop in performance is significant. Despite NBC's Saturday night encore broadcast of the series premiere, the second episode of the series drew 1.9 million fewer viewers than the Monday, November 3 premiere's 11.2 million viewers, a drop of approximately 17%. The program's Adults 18-49 performance also fell similarly, dropping from a 5.8/15 rating/share to a 4.6/12.
Whether this is merely a momentary ratings hiccup or an indication of the beginning of a Fame-like ratings dive remains to be seen, but we're sure NBC executives are significantly more apprehensive over the future of the series than they were after last week's strong ratings debut.