MTV’s ‘Buckwild’ Premiere Beats ‘Jersey Shore’ Debut
Its been called “The Jersey Shore Of Appalachia” but MTV’s Buckwild last night bested its network time slot predecessor. The 10 PM debut of the reality series about a group of thrill-seeking young adults in small town West Virginia town pull in an audience of 2.49 million viewers and a 1.4 rating over its back-to-back episodes Thursday night. That’s over a million more viewers than the 1.375 million who watched the premiere of Jersey Shore in 2009. Of course Jersey Shore went on to get record ratings for MTV. At one point, in its third year, Jersey Shore had an audience of 9 million, as Snooki, Pauly D and the other housemates became national topics of conversation – even attracting kind words from GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Jersey Shore wrapped up its six-season run on December 20 with soft ratings. Last month, even before it debuted, the new show attracted some of the controversy common to Jersey Shore when Senator Joe Manchin III called on MTV to “put a stop to the travesty called Buckwild.” The West Virginia Democrat said that MTV president Stephen Friedman and the network “preyed on young people, coaxed them into displaying shameful behavior — and now you are profiting from it. That is just wrong.” Obviously not ratingswise.
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