He might have more than 24 million Twitter followers and be on the verge of topping the Billboard 200 album chart with his “Believe,” but Justin Bieber was unable to attract notable viewership for his NBC special Wednesday.
The pop phenom attracted a weak 0.9 adults 18-49 rating with 3.31 million viewers for the “All Around the World” special. Though network profiles and concert specials do not typically deliver big ratings, the numbers for Bieber’s special were particularly low and roughly half of what Adele drew for a recent special on the network.
Given that the rating came the same week Bieber will move more than 400,000 copies of his new album, it is doubtful tears will be shed over the rating, especially since megastars like Taylor Swift could not draw much better for network specials (granted, the 1.1 for Swift’s 2010 special included an additional million viewers and aired against the end of an NFL game on Thanksgiving).
At the same time, the bomb of a rating does reveal that Bieber is not an automatic draw. Bieber’s core fanbase is passionate and enough to propel him to massive success in a variety of channels, but the mere idea of spending an hour with Bieber and his music is not enough to glue the masses to their screens.