The folks at E! and WWE — and of course the Total Divas cast — should be patting themselves on the back right now, because as has already been touted by the network, last night’s premiere was E!’s highest rated series debut since August 2012.
Even more impressive, the WWE Divas proved more popular with audiences than an Olympic gold medalist, a Billboard Hot 100-topping boy band and one of the top British girl bands today.
E! has had three highly publicized series launch in the last several months, but last night’s 1.3 million viewers for Total Divas trumped them all.
For comparative purposes, January’s Chasing The Saturdays premiere drew 914,000 viewers, and the launch of What Would Ryan Lochte Do? attracted 807,000 viewers in April.
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Next up, June saw the premiere of The Wanted Life, which had big pedigree behind it — Ryan Seacrest, who also produces the various Kardashian shows, is a producer, as is Justin Bieber‘s manager Scooter Braun — but that show mustered just 600,000 viewers in the 10pm time slot that Total Divas now occupies. On top of that, The Wanted Life premiered right after the highly anticipated season eight premiere of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which drew three million viewers.
The Divas also topped their predecessors in the adult 18-49 demo drawing 855,000 adult viewers compared to 606,000 for The Saturdays, 528,000 for Ryan Lochte, and 409,000 for The Wanted.
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E! touts that Total Divas drew two million viewers across two telecasts last night — the initial airing at 10pm and a replay at midnight — meaning that 700,000 viewers tuned in for the replay, giving it more viewers than the premiere telecasts of The Wanted Life and WWRLD?
And there’s this: The Wanted Life scored 1.7 million viewers over three telecasts the night it premiered. Total Divas got two million with just two airings.
The numbers are impressive — now let’s hope they continue to rise!
Total Divas airs Sundays at 10pm on E!
Want more Total Divas? Check out our full coverage here.
