To no surprise, NBC’s “Love Bites” made no dent in the Thursday ratings race.
One of NBC’s more-buzzworthy series at the time of last year’s upfronts, in part due to reports that its star Becki Newton was the most sought after female comedy talent last season, numerous issues resulted in the show being delayed from its fall premiere. The delays continued through the season, and it now has reached summer burn-off status.
And in true summer burn-off fashion, it premiered to an abysmal 1.0 adults 18-49 rating with just 2.53 million viewers. It absolutely had no help from its lead-in (a re-run of “Parks and Recreation” averaged a 1.1 with 2.52 million viewers at 9:30PM), and its positioning against game two of the NBA Finals certainly didn’t help (at least, and likely far more than, a 5.9 with 13.80 million viewers from 10-11PM), but there is virtually no upside in that ratings performance.
Granted, delayed until the summer with minimal premiere hype, it was not as if anyone could have expected a 3.0 demo rating.
If one were desperately searching for a positive, he would be limited to the fact that the show added about 30,000 viewers for the 10:30-11 portion, suggesting that fans were not turned off by the premiere.