Some of us may like TNT’s newest offering, Trust Me, but it seems we’re just “some”. Two episodes in, the new comedy-drama saw its ratings drop significantly, with last Monday’s episode wheeling in only 1.9 million viewers. It’s a marked decrease considering that the series premiere, which introduced us to the world of Mason (Eric McCormack) and Conner (Tom Cavanagh), had 3.4 million viewers. It’s also surprising considering that its lead-in, The Closer, was scoring huge numbers; the moment that show ended, 65% of its viewers left to tune in to the new drama.
The show’s performance bucks the trend recently seen on TNT, whose newer dramas have gone off to strong starts. The channel has debuted a few new dramas since The Closer‘s debut in 2005; only two of them weren’t successful enough to warrant a second season. Saving Grace premiered in July 2007 with 6.4 million viewers; Raising the Bar, with 7.7 million viewers this September; and most recently, Leverage, with 5.5 million viewers two months ago. All of those numbers are considerably higher than Trust Me‘s premiere.
Another possible factor in Trust Me‘s performance is TNT’s new strategy to air shows head-to-head with free-to-air broadcasters, much like what other cable networks USA Network and HBO (whose third Big Love premiere registered a spike in viewers against the Super Bowl, surprisingly). Yet another possible factor is the mixed reviews the show has received so far, easily summed up as the show being unspectacular—not bad, but not that good.
Still, TNT seems optimistic about the show’s performance; all things are still go for the show, which returns this Monday from 10pm. And besides, it’s a rare occurrence for a show to get cancelled after two episodes—most usually they are given time to develop unless performance has been really disappointing. This doesn’t seem to be one of them—or so I’d like to think.
-Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: Variety
(Image courtesy of TNT)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
