Lifetime Buries Its Bristol Palin Bomb Out Back and Hopes We Don’t Notice

Last updated on July 1st, 2012 at 04:15 pm

Lifetime has quietly announced that after getting a taste of how much America can’t stand the Palins, they are taking the first steps towards ridding themselves of Bristol Palin’s reality show bomb.

After a horrible debut where Bristol Palin’s much publicized reality show lost near 1.1 million viewers off of its Dance Moms lead in, Life’s a Tripp managed to lose an additional 140,000 viewers. On week one the Palins conned 726,000 Americans into watching their propaganda disguised as reality television, but that number sank to 586,000 for the first half hour of week two. Notice I said the first half hour, because at 10:30 PM, the show lost another 160,000 viewers and fell to 426,000. By the end of episode two the show was down 300,000 viewers from episode one.

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Just how bad are the ratings? Consider that Dance Moms did 2.125 million viewers at 9 PM. Bristol Palin came on the air at 10 PM and over 75% of that audience changed the channel. Lifetime has obviously seen enough, but because they were dumb enough to a) Spend lots of money promoting a show starring America’s most despised family since the Mansons, and b) Give the Palin family a season commitment and a paycheck — they are stuck with this show.

Lifetime’s solution to the Bristol bomb that is wrecking their Tuesday nights is to get out of prime time. Effective immediately, Life’s A Tripp has been banished to 11 PM. If the show continues to hurt the network, look for either a quick burn off of episodes disguised as a marathon, or a move to an even more remote time slot.

There are numerous reasons why Bristol Palin’s reality show failed, but the biggest one is that the show is awful. I mean really, really awful. Like bad mockumentary awful. It may be most unwatchable 60 minutes on television. Somebody at Lifetime was fooled into thinking that Bristol Palin’s Dancing With The Stars appearance meant that she was popular. What they might not have known was that Palinbots rigged the vote for Bristol because they thought that it would help resurrect their Joan of Noah’s Ark, Sarah Palin, back from the political dead.

Lifetime got suckered, and like every other individual or organization that has either paid or voted for a Palin, they are now left holding the bag. It looks like the grifting gravy train may finally be coming to an end. Sarah PAC can’t raise money, Mama Grizzle has been reduced to giving speeches for free, and Bristol Palin got the boot off prime time after just two episodes.

Sarah and her crew need to realize that America has been trying to break up with her for almost four years. It is over. We don’t want to see you anymore. Here is your stuff back. Go live your life and please stop calling us, or we will get a restraining order.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association