All indications suggested “Jersey Shore” had finally peaked in popularity by last season, and sure enough, its fifth season premiere dipped in the ratings.
With a 4.0 adults 18-49 number, the show was down slightly from the 4.3 rating for season four’s premiere.
Still, with a demographic number second only to “Grey’s Anatomy” on television Thursday and a healthy viewership count of 7.6 million, “Shore” remains a juggernaut for MTV.
It will be interesting to follow how the show performs over the course of the season. Since becoming a phenomenon, the typical “Shore” trajectory has been for the show to premiere strong, peak for the episode featuring a key midseason “storyline” (usually involving a fight of some sort) and then slow a bit ahead of the season finale.
Now that “Shore” appears to have peaked, it will be particularly intriguing to see if the show can still capture the same amount of enthusiasm for its midseason story arcs.