Minus Jon, Minus Kate, Minus 8
Once a hit, now a miss: with ratings plummeting, the Gosselin marriage may not be the only thing terminated.
Yesterday, Kate Kreider-Gosselin of TLC's hit reality show Jon and Kate Plus 8, changed her Facebook status: "With ratings falling, this might be the last season of Jon and Kate plus 8. I'm not sure yet."
Over the last few months, the reality show that found its name in numbers has been watching its own numbers fall. In June, a record 10.6 million viewers tuned in to watch Jon and Kate Gosselin announce their separation on TLC's Jon and Kate Plus 8. Ten years of marriage, eight children, four seasons of television, and a home video of the young lovebirds exchanging gifts sat in the insets of our eyes. We watched, riveted, so many of our own and our parents' decomposing marriages mirrored in Jon and Kate. The show then took a month-long hiatus, where the real family attempted to really regroup sans camera. But the rocky marriage returned to rocky ratings.
With Jon and Kate now each filming separately with the children, viewer response was cool. On August 3rd, approximately 4.2 million viewers tuned in, on August 10th, 3.5 million, and the numbers continue to decline, now garnering a viewership at the 1.7 million level.
While the series' potential end may shock fans, according to US magazine, "After they announced their split, experts speculated the show might not survive. I don't know if the show can make that new transition [from two parents raising eight kids to one parent raising the children],' said Robert J. Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. It's like if The Cosby Show, mid-season, suddenly became Married With Children.'"
Similarly, US quotes Marc Berman, senior television editor at Mediaweek, who declares "Once all of this dies down and Jon and Kate aren't in the news anymore, this could be a problem for the show. They divorce, they move on with their lives and so do the viewers
I'm worried.'"
But subtraction is no longer abstraction, as viewership has dwindled with divorce. Are fans disgusted with Jon's twentysomething trysts? Was the tension between Jon and Kate what turned people on and tuned them in? Has overexposure killed the show? Ironically, it seems the absence of Jon Gosselin, a man who never had any presence, has affected the ratings.
On Jon and Kate Plus 8, Kate Gosselin once asked rhetorically, "How does the show go on?" After the divorcees finish their fifth season, this may be one TLC show that can't.
