The Moment of Truth kicked off its second season Tuesday, helping FOX win the night in the ratings. If you bear with me for a second, I'll tell you why this is good news for
Survivor. The Moment of Truth, which debuted to monster numbers in its first season earlier this year, is expected to be one of the higher rated series of the summer. Also, FOX, at their recent upfronts for the 2008-2009 season, placed
The Moment of Truth on their Fall schedule on Thursdays at 8pm. When pressed about
The Moment of Truth's fall scheduling, in regards to
Survivor, which will be a time slot competitor, FOX entertainment chairman Peter Liguori said:"Look, it's eroding. It's an older show. Its eventually going to give up and we're trying to accelerate that." With FOX taking direct aim at CBS's long-running reality series, the question was this: Would
The Moment of Truth retain its Winter/Spring audience, or would it regress without its incomparable
American Idol lead-in? Thankfully for
Survivor, it looks like it's the former.
Your Take
spnf214 said:
I should hope are society has not gotten bad enough that this show can be competitve in mainstream broadcas...
While it was still the sixth rated show of the night,
The Moment of Truth's competition was not very formidable and the episode lost a significant percentage of viewers as compared to its first season, post-Idol episodes. Granted, this was to be expected, as you could literally put anything after
American Idol and it'd receive above ten million viewers. However, if Tuesday's second season premiere is any indication,
The Moment of Truth, come its third season, will have a hard time keeping up with
Survivor, let alone signal its demise.
FOX has been clever in launching new series with the help of
American Idol. If they've had big, new reality shows that they've wanted to bring attention to over the last few years, they've given it the post-Idol slot. The on going success of
So You Think You Can Dance, for instance, can at least be partly attributed to its initial pairing with Idol. The problem has always been what happens when those shows lose the help of American Idol. The Moment of Truth is a show I patently despise, so I'm rooting for its failure, but even when I look at it as objectively as I can, the future of The Moment of Truth appears bleak. FOX shouldn't be expecting huge numbers without the help of a juggernaut lead-in. Once the third season of The Moment of Truth comes along, audiences may already be sick of it, and given its Thursday time slot competition (
Ugly Betty, Survivor, My Name is Earl and
30 Rock), the ratings will probably be less than stellar.
Who will have bigger ratings in the Fall?
-Oscar Dahl, BuddyTV Senior Writer
Source: Zap2it, AdAge.com
(Image Courtesy of FOX)