Ellen DeGeneres is really having a serious problem now. Maybe that’s why she keeps flipping $40 million houses.
For the week of April 4th, Ellen’s afternoon talk show hit an all time low in the ratings– just 800,000 viewers average for those five days. That’s down 11% from the prior week, and around 300,000 viewers off since the beginning of the season.
By contrast, “Live with Kelly and Ryan,” which airs earlier in the day, averages 1.8 million. Ellen is now being beaten by low quality shows like Wendy Williams and Maury Povich.
At the same time, her weekly NBC nighttime show, “Game of Games,” has lost half its audience this season, sinking to around 1.5 million viewers per week.
Most of this can be attributed to the reports of backstage chaos and a toxic work environment, producers being fired, and celebrities complaining about their treatment.
Some of it can be tallied to overall low viewership for syndicated shows in the last couple of weeks. Constant interruptions for news bulletins and hearings, press conferences, etc are a big problem for afternoon shows.
Still, Ellen keeps pulling in A list stars. But they have less and less to promote because of the pandemic curtailing movie releases, etc. All of this is a bad omen heading into May sweeps.
Photo c2021 Showbiz411 by Norah Lawlor
