I’m far from a reality television fanatic, but the shows I do watch regularly all have one thing in common: people worth watching. As a consequence, my interest level has sharply varied depending on the season in question. For example: I will always watch repeats of Top Chef season 1, usually watch repeats of seasons 2, 4 and 6, may watch the occasional season 3 or 7 airing but will have nothing to do with season 5. The show wasn’t any worse on paper during season 5, I just didn’t really enjoy watching any of the contestants not named Fabio or Stefan. The same general principal could also apply to American Idol (still love season 4, still hate 3), Survivor (still love season 1, still hate 2) or Project Runway (still love season 4, hate season 5). Just because you have a hit format doesn’t mean it’s always going to work if you’re changing out players. That’s a hard lesson Bravo is learning with The Real Housewives.
According to Radar Online, the failures of Real Housewives: DC and now Miami have forced producers to reevaluate their strategy. Rather than constantly expanding, they’re going to shore up the incarnations that did work, and the ones that didn’t are likely S.O.L. The aforementioned website is reporting Real Housewives: DC has been canceled, but Zap2It reached out to Bravo and got a statement saying they haven’t yet decided on the program’s future. Best case scenario, it’ll be shelved for a retool.
I would suspect if Bravo officially scraps it for more episodes of New York, Orange County, Atlanta or New Jersey, hardcore viewers won’t lose much sleep. They can’t all be winners, and the more you expand, the more you detract from your original brand.
