Jon & Kate Plus Eight Plus Nine Point Eight Million

by nicole ~ May 28, 2009

I hate to admit that even though I’ve seen just a small handful of episodes previously, Monday night’s “Jon & Kate Plus Eight” premiere is queued up in my DVR, waiting for a rainy Sunday afternoon.  Anyone who has been remotely alive and awake in the past few weeks has heard something about TLC’s new favorite couple.

I’m only speculating “favorite,” but based on the audience Monday night’s episode pulled in, what’s not to love for TLC?  According to this article in AdvertisingAge:

“Out-rating every network program, with 9.8 million viewers, ‘Jon & Kate’ caught the public’s imagination due to tabloid tales of inferred infidelity by both Jon and Kate Gosselin. Their rocky relationship has brought Brad and Angelina and other Hollywood heavies to lighter prominence on Us Weekly and People covers.”

It’s interesting to me to see how today’s model of television has changed so much from what it was like when I was growing up in the days of shows like Cheers, Seinfeld and the TGIF lineup.  AdvertisingAge explains:

“Shows like ‘Jon & Kate’ are also redefining drama itself, as the reality TV soap opera — and the meta-media narrative surrounding it — is a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story that even the scriptwriters of daytime dramas such as CBS’s ‘Young and the Restless’ and prime-time soaps like ABC’s ‘Desperate Housewives’ would be hard-pressed to pen.

And networks, hard-pressed to pay for more expensive scripted series, are increasingly hearing the siren song of reality TV, so alluring in an era of media companies sounding the alarm of escalating programming costs.”

So why are we all so riveted to this low-budget type of television?  In this Daily News article Dr. Debbie Magids, explains:

“When people watch ‘Jon & Kate’ they feel better about their own lives,” says Dr. Debbie Magids, author of “All the Good Ones Are Taken” (St. Martin’s Press). “A lot of TV shows make people feel worse about their own lives since people on TV are happier and sexier and better able to work through their relationships. But with Jon and Kate, it’s what’s going on in everyone’s home. It’s not always perfect and smooth, and up to now, it was about a marriage that was making it.”

At the end of the day, the networks need to make money.  As AdvertisingAge points out, TLC is still at risk of this model crashing down.

“To be sure, as unseemly as it may seem to many — including, now, close family — the cultural and commercial combination of “Jon & Kate” may be a once-in-a-lifetime, lightning-in-a-bottle opportunity for TLC. And the very same disheartening (if not disturbing) dynamic that has riveted millions may be the undoing of the show, if Jon and Kate split or the damage to the “Eight” leads them or viewers — or both — to quit.”

Nicole Amato is an Account Executive at Mediashop PR and a graduate of Northeastern University with a BA in Journalism.