'The Bachelor' Franchise's Painful Decline

• Despite falling viewing figures, The Bachelorette Season 20 is airing now, with Season 28 of The Bachelor confirmed too.
• Some contestants and hosts of The Bachelor franchise have brought the brand into disrepute in the past.
• TV producer told Newsweek the shows have faced falling viewership "due to boring character choices as the title leads."
• The Bachelor peaked with 25.9 million viewers in 2002, but an average of 2.9 million viewers watched Season 27.

Once seen as an American phenomenon, The Bachelor limped into its 27th season of television in 2023.

The reality competition show has seen dozens of bachelors, and hundreds of contestants enter in an effort to "find love" while many have instead found fame. The Bachelor launch quickly spawned The Bachelorette to keep viewers hooked.

Launching for the first time in 2002, The Bachelor has now reached legal drinking age, which might explain why the franchise is looking worse for wear these days in the eyes of the audience.

Falling viewership, cast controversies, and as one TV producer suggested to Newsweek, "boring" contestants, could point to why The Bachelor has been on a painful decline for years now.

Are People Still Watching?

The television landscape is phenomenally different to what it was when The Bachelor first launched on our screens on March 25, 2002.

At that time, reality TV was in its infancy, streaming television was still many years away, and viewers regularly tuned in by the millions to check out what was being broadcast by the American Broadcasting Company.

For the first five seasons in the mid-2000s, the audience figures regularly averaged at above 10 million (according to SpottedRatings.com), with the Season 2 finale peaking at a reported 25.9 million. As time has gone on, that number has naturally dipped, with the most recent Season 27, aired between January and March 2023, averaging around 2.9 million.

It should be noted that by today's viewing standards, when there's more options available than ever before, 2.9 million U.S. viewers is still something of a success, which could explain ABC have already announced there'll be a Season 28.

Meanwhile The Bachelorette has faced a similar journey to its big brother show, with declining viewing figures now plateauing to a couple of million weekly viewers. Season 20 of that show launched on June 26 with Charity Lawson as the titular bachelorette looking for love.

Newsweek has asked ABC for comment by email.

Reputational Damage

While hundreds of people have come and gone through the revolving doors of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette over the decades, not everyone has made it out unscathed.

While many have faded into obscurity at this point, others elongated their 15 minutes of fame and became celebrities in their own right. Of these many celebs who've found their fame on the show, some brought controversy to The Bachelor brand.

DeMario Jackson, a 2017 contestant, appeared on The Bachelorette, then Bachelor in Paradise later that year. During his time on the spin-off, he was accused by a third party of sexual misconduct involving another contestant, Corinne Olympios, who was reportedly too drunk to remember the incident. Eventually the show continued without Jackson or Olympios, but there was the addition of newly implemented drinking rules for contestants. A Warner Bros.' investigation found no misconduct had occurred.

Former The Bachelor contestant, and lead person in The Bachelorette, Hannah Brown, made negative headlines in May 2020 when she said the n-word whilst rapping to a DaBaby song on Instagram Live. Another former Bachelorette, Rachel Lindsay, spoke out against Brown, which eventually prompted her to make two lengthy apologies on social media as she vowed "to do better."

It's not just the contestants who've courted controversy, as former host Chris Harrison left the franchise under a cloud in June 2021 after wading into a race row over contestant Rachael Kirkconnell.

And while there are issues to be found with problematic contestants and host, there's an even bigger danger to the future of The Bachelor — boring contestants. That's according to TV and movie producer Stefano Da Frè, president of Rosso Films International, who suggests The Bachelor formula is getting stale.

"For the past 27 seasons, ABC's The Bachelor has tried to combine elements of glamour, romance, and the chance to find love to its viewing audience. However, that journey, like searching for true love, has not always been a smooth ride," he told Newsweek.

"The franchise has suffered a decline in viewership over the years due to boring character choices as the title leads for The Bachelor. These missteps in character leads have cheapened the franchise, and steered the show away from any authentic experience of romantic true love to instead cheap reality show drama that is now commonplace in our television culture."

Competition in reality TV is another factor that may have tarnished The Bachelor's supremacy. While in the early 2000s, The Bachelor and The Bachelorette found their niche, today's television has far more copycats and spiritual successors.

Love Island, Love is Blind, Married at First Sight, FBoy Island and many more dating shows are attempting to wrestle the crown away from The Bachelor. The franchise's own spin-offs may also have diluted its own market.

Has The Bachelor Gotten Worse?

Reality TV shows are rarely reviewed in the same way cinematic releases or scripted television dramas are, so it's hard to say if the critics think The Bachelor is the same show it was in 2002.

We can judge how the show has done in the eyes of the fans, via the IMDb viewership rating, which actually produces some surprising results.

Of the 7,400 people who have rated the show, 43.3 percent of people (3,200) have given it one star out of 10, which largely skews the results. It is rated 3.2 out of 10 in total, ranking it amongst some of the worst shows on television. However, it is also one of the longest running shows in existence.

Looking at the audience scores across each season, according to viewers the quality has vastly increased over the decades.

The episodes during Season 1 ranged from 3.1 to 4.3, which was around how much it stayed until Season 8. Slowly, the figures have risen each year, culminating in an impressive Season 27 where across the 10 episodes, the average viewer score was 7.5 out of 10.

Will It Last?

The question all fans ask themselves about the winning couple at the end of each season. Of the 27 seasons aired so far, only three couples remain together to this day. Out of the first 24 seasons, only one couple are still together, 2013 winners Sean Lowe and Catherine Giudici.

With such a poor success rate in finding true love for these contestants, bachelors and bachelorettes, perhaps the jig is up? Viewers are beginning to discover that a competition reality show format may not be the most efficient way to find true love.