Rowan Blanchard (ICE Starlets), Young Girls (ICE-TV) (Channel 7)
Network Season Rankings
1. ICE - 6 wins (29 points)
2. ROD - 2 wins (18 points)
3. SBC - 2 wins (13 points)
WHEN ICE GOES KELLY GREEN ON FRIDAYS IT USUALLY MEANS THEY'RE WINNING THAT NIGHT WITH EASE
Since the Kelly Green lineup started in November 2013, ICE has come in first place every time as this marks the fifth time in a row that the Kelly Green lineup topped the night on NITRO Television in primetime.
Starting with the Kelly Green Friday comedies they started the season cooking and they continue cooking through the second week as this is an unique block full of comedies led by teen actors portraying characters who are going through their adolescences and becoming young adults in society. This has become a powerful block featuring youths always getting into trouble and stuff like that so that makes it relatable to people watching outside of the teen demographic and ICE has done a great job of creating these types of comedies over the years so they know what works with their audience and what their bread and butter going forward.
What's changed for ICE this year is that their roster really fits with these shows so right now they're rolling with these shows.
Starting with Jaime the show has gotten a huge makeover this season with Jenny Sense who came to ICE this past offseason is leading that show as Jaime whose the young teacher of a bunch of troubled students. As that cast comes along Jaime has already become a much stronger comedy this season as it's leading off with around 90 million viewers in its first two weeks leading in very well for Molly in South Philly which got the night over 100 million viewers. Young Girls was also revamped heavily this season with a brand new cast featuring actresses like Madison Pettis, Kaylee Bryant, Lisa Grantham, Amber Montana, and Rowan Blanchard just to name a few and that show has gotten much stronger as well as Young Girls is actually growing out of the very strong Molly in South Philly which is a very good sign for that show. That's another cast that's still developing every Friday night this season and since these shows tape live it's easy for ICE to make changes to the cast every week to see what works as they're currently using their live audiences this fall at Paramount Hall to see whose the strongest and weakest actors of the show so they can finalize the best cast possible.
Paris Jackson posting on the campus of Paramount Hall late on Friday afternoon before her taping of Youth of Life on Friday night in Toronto, Ontario on Friday September 14, 2018
PARIS JACKSON = RATINGS!A developing story from earlier was how much of a star Michael Jackson's daughter Paris Jackson has become for ICE this season as her star power continues to grow as she had a huge impact in daytime and now she has a huge presence as one of the leading actors on Youth of Life this season which is a show that had an important piece depart this season in Tracy Kimmell who led the original incarnation of the series from NITRO's earlier years and the reboot that started last season. To help with this transition they added in Kay Shields to the cast and ICE just announced that she will be a regular on the show this season and her sister Strawberry is doing a small 4-episode run until her new show DJ Becky's Friends is ready to go on Wednesdays and Kay will be doing double duty as she'll have a part on that show as well. Youth of Life's cast is expected to be huge so Kay's workload won't be as heavy here once the cast fully develops. Youth of Life finished Fridays with 115 million viewers which makes it the highest rated ICE comedy this week. Youth of Life is poised right now to be a top 5 comedy on NITRO this season.
New Girls in Town Pageant continues to surge through this season as their 3rd episode improved from Sunday as the Norwood auditions got up to 165 million viewers which is 10 million below last week's premiere with Kaia Gerber's audition but still a huge number as this could be the second most watched program of the week pending what Sunday Night Football does on Sunday over on NBC. Alannah Walton led the Norwood auditions on Friday evening.
Who Wanted Nichole Dead? continues to take advantage of its new lead-in staying over 120 million viewers this week getting 74% retention so as long as it stays over that 70% retention mark ICE will be happy with these performances.
ROD came in 2nd place and they had an interesting Friday evening averaging about 75 million viewers to keep ahead of SBC and grabbing a huge couple of points.
The ratings for ROD were pretty good on Friday because in week 2 where ratings usually drop-off from the premiere numbers everything stayed in a healthy area as Koy Jung's NITRO debut matched Lucy Hale's new variety show last week and with ROD announcing that Koy Jung's new show will move to Wednesdays and I Love Lucy Hale will move to Fridays and change to an American sketch comedy format to compete against Molly in South Philly and The YouTube Life this is a very good sign for Koy Jung who is one of ROD's more promising drafted rookies.
Miss ROD Pageant continues to do well but it faces better competition on Fridays compared to Thursdays so its been off about 25-30 million viewers from what it gets the night before.
The two B&B soaps Steffy Forrester and Quinn Fuller which were both spun-off from Sheila Carter have been doing very to start the season as they face the NGIT Pageant and they're still getting over 80 million viewers so that's phenomenal for ROD to know that these two shows are the real deal as Jacqueline MacInnes Wood who plays Steffy has not really lost her star power from her ICE days.
Australian Nights going back to last season just hasn't generated any real interests and you gotta wonder if ROD is going to start running out on patience with it soon as ROD wanted the soap to play to the Aussie viewers but with RTN gone now it looks pointless like Cherry Street Boarding School for Girls that was cancelled last weekend over on ICE. The 12am hour for the NGIT Pageant is usually the strongest hour of the night so ROD will probably not change this and just let Australian Nights bleed out of it. Country Made continues to grow out of Australian Nights here.
KAITLYN vs. MOLLY ROUND 1
ICE Phederation President Molly Ephraim has beaten her ex-LMS co-star Kaitlyn Dever in the NITRO Television ratings ever since they started battling each other and nothing has changed here but The YouTube Life debut for SBC and with the changes in the format the show gone way up from last week's original incarnation of Kaitlyn Dever's diss show with Molly's replacement on LMS Molly McCook. The YouTube Life added in over 25 million viewers to the timeslot so this show has promise here. Ratings wise The YouTube Life probably can't compete with the already established Molly in South Philly who also has a much better lead-in but the battles is within the content in the show and SBC has enough viewers now to make this a real battle. With ROD joining the battle next Friday that will be the true ratings battle because both variety shows Lucy and Koy both scored 64 million viewers so this will be a good battle.
Many SBC actors got a chance to battle against ICE and ROD actors mainly ICE actors who have been bullying SBC actors and the theme for ICE this week was the anti-gay stuff but the highlight of the night was Alexandra Krosney's diss on her own little sister Tonya Krosney. Madison Beer came really hard at Megan May Williams and Bridget Satterlee who was really trying to bully her. Joey Lawrence made his season debut on Molly as he plays Molly's fictional dad on the show and he took some good shots on Giovanni and Matthew Lawrence. Social media really blew up creating a homosexual vs. heterosexual war on the internet as Molly is going to have the heteros watching and the homos will be watching YouTube Life.
Critics absolutely love The YouTube Life as they see it as a very good change heating up the diss show wars and with ROD coming in things are about to really heat up here. Nothing big on the live front like we had with Madison last week but Molly hinted that she has a huge guest on next week though.
SBC started off solidly with the season premiere of Diff'rent Strokes which was way up from last week's offerings and Team SBC got over 70 million viewers but late night was low again like last week unfortunately.
Tomorrow starts the NBC era at the former original 3 studio SBC so they'll be unleashing week 2 of Xtina Grimmie Hour as they'll celebrate becoming NBC the rest of the night. ROD debuts WFL Saturday Night Football and will showcase Sheila Carter in late night in their first anticipated battle against the season premiere of Saturday Night Diamond Girls after week 2 of the Vegas Showgirls auditions down in Charlotte. Saturday Night Diamond Girls was taped on Friday night so the non-live environment will give it a different feel as spoilers have been leaked. ICE had to replace Cherry Street and Donny & Marie still isn't ready to go so 8-10pm looks open here. We'll have a 3-way porn battle at 3am on all three networks as Neta Alchemist's new porn series launches.
ICE told NITRO Officials personally that their first live sex show of the season will be arriving sometime in October but they have not decided yet who will be in the first sex special just yet.
