TV Ratings: 'Ready For Love' Flops

Maybe audiences aren’t really as “Ready for Love” as NBC had hoped. Despite aggressive promotion for the dating show, and a great time slot following “The Voice,” “Ready For Love” did not bring in much viewership.

While 3.8 million viewers tuned in to watch the two-hour premiere, numbers fell on the second hour of the show. It ranked only 1.6 in the key 18-49 demographic.

To compare, “The Voice” had a cool 13 million viewers, and a 4.2 rating.

The adult demographic that “Ready For Love” brought in is actually the same as the series premiere of the Hugh Dancy drama “Hannibal” last Thursday… however “Ready For Love” had a 282% larger lead-in audience thanks to “The Voice,” a better time slot with weaker competition, and significantly more promotion.

The show was hosted by Bill and Giuliana Rancic, and is produced by “Desperate Housewives” star Eva Longoria.

Though there are three contestants, only one man got the spotlight on the premiere—divorced Tim Lopez, the guitarist from Plain White T’s. Yeah, seriously. Since when do band members struggle to find dates?

Allison Keene of The Hollywood Reporter says:

“The show drives home the point early on that people, left to their own devices, don't know how to date. Leave it up to matchmakers and yentas, apparently… But the whole things ends up feeling a lot like a Jane Austen novel: women are falling over themselves, desperate to do whatever necessary to lock down a man when the odds are stacked against them (and the focus is, of course, wholly on the man)…. ‘Ready For Love’ seems to want to establish itself as something different so much that, in its exuberance, it's thrown in everything but the kitchen sink during its frantic premiere.”

Did you watch? What did you think?