Is Ellen Degeneres Quitting Bethenny Frankel’s Talk Show?
October 9, 2013 by Lindsay Cronin
By now, you’ve surely heard about the dwindling ratings of Bethenny Frankel’s talk show. Since the show premiered in early September, the ratings have been lackluster and seem to be on a steady decline with an 11% loss of viewers in the last week. As a result, the show’s producer, Ellen Degeneres, has reportedly been left ”embarrassed” and wanting to “cut her losses.”
“When the first-week ratings came out, Ellen’s producers looked and said, ‘It’s so bad,’ [and] they requested it be reprocessed, which is basically a recount,” a source tells the NY Daily News. It was that bad. Nine out of 10 times nothing is wrong with the way the ratings have been processed.”
“When they did come out, they were bad again,” the source continues. “But they have nothing to replace it. Now competitors smell blood in the water and they’re calling to pitch their own shows, saying, ‘Slide this in.’”
While it may make sense for the network to want to get rid of the show right away and fill the time slot with something more successful, it simply isn’t that easy.
“You can’t just yank a syndicated talk show off the air, it’s not like a sitcom,” the source explains. “What happens is you don’t renew it. It’ll keep airing but it’s a dead man walking.”
Adding insult to injury for Bethenny is the fact that Queen Latifah’s new show is scoring big in the ratings with an A-list guest lineup including John Travolta, Sharon Stone, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx, and Will Smith.
In an effort to fight off Bethenny’s main competitor, Ellen allegedly began blackmailing guests of Queen Latifah, threatening to leave them out of the lineup for Bethenny if they went on her show.
“Ellen was putting it out there that if you do Latifah you can’t do Bethenny,” the source claimed, adding, “Bethenny doesn’t appeal to station managers across the country and whoever had the fear that she was too New York was right. The whole thing feels forced.”