Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
The premiere of Oxygen’s talent competition The Glee Project in the US drew just 455,000 viewers, of whom just 80,000 were in the cable channel’s core demographic of women aged 18-34.
Granted the show faced the final game of a riveting NBA championship as well as the Tony Awards. But the ratings data left Oxygen executives surprised and disappointed. Jason Klarman, president of Oxygen Media, sent his staff a memo to buck them up and to reiterate the network’s commitment to the show, in which contestants compete to appear on Glee, the musical smash on Fox.
The Glee Project was supposed to open big, coming with a built-in fan base that devours everything Glee-related, from music downloads, to concert tickets, to blog posts about the characters’ summer vacation plans.
Oxygen spent millions promoting The Glee Project. The show received positive reviews and social media tracker Tumblrr ranked it the No. 4 cable TV show on Sunday. Digital traffic was healthy; a music video of the cast performing Katy Perry’s Firework generated half-a-million views on YouTube.
“We couldn’t be more proud of this critically acclaimed, first of its kind series that I – and this company – believe in 200 per cent,” wrote Klarman. After listing all the positives, he added: “Which is why, the 719,000 total viewers for the 9pm-10pm premiere and encore presentation was not the start that we had hoped for.”
