Why Are You The One? Can Thank Some Moms for Their Success

By DC Cueva

@DC408dxtr

A little spur of the moment post on here. And with me being busy with following Real World Ex-Plosion and Are You The One?, I wanted to share a random thought on here, and why some of my very good friends can thank a few other members of Team MTV for their success.

If you probably don't know by now, I am a huge Real World/Challenge fanatic, but I am also an overall MTV fan as well. I am open to watching any show the channel airs, thanks mainly in part to my great passion for storytelling, being used to the laid-back nature of The Real World's way of telling stories of young people, and now with its personalities being very fan friendly. I might not be into the scripted fare much, but I could never say no to watching those shows either. I bought season 1 of Teen Wolf that I've watched only snippets of it, but it's there.

Something that sort of spurred this little random thought on here is a show that, aside from Catfish and a few other things, is probably MTV's most popular show that's on right now (not counting Jersey Shore which ended over a year ago) and yet it gets a good deal of haterade from the social world. And of course, I am talking about the Teen Mom franchise. When I was at the store earlier this evening, I spotted an US Weekly with one of the ladies from the show, Kailyn, on the cover. And it's been the case the last few years of the show's three casts gracing the tabloid covers at the checkout counter.

I know of a few of my followers, who are fellow RW/Challenge fans too and for whom I'm not going to call out on here so I don't myself get in hot water, might question why the show is still on the air. 

And thanks to me being busy, I still haven't yet watched those DVD's I found at the thrift shop of the first seasons of 16 & Pregnant and Teen Mom, but they're there ready for me to watch. And of course, Farrah Abraham gave me a follow a little while back, thanks to having met Jay from Real World Ex-Plosion. Now, I might not watch the show right now, but I could never say no to watching it, just as long as it is a show that I can be comfortable watching it whether I like it or not in the end. And I also don't like to start drama in voicing a negative opinion publicly so I don't get in trouble.

But, for the cast of the show airs right afterwards in that money timeslot of Tuesday at 11pm, they sure have loved having that lead-in since they premiered. Last week with the fight we saw with Simone and Shanley (and for which it will continue into this week's episode), Are You The One? had its best viewership figures yet, and it looks from here that it will only grow from there with the drama that's yet to go down from Hawaii. It premiered with the best ratings of an MTV series premiere since Buckwild last year, and viewership & buzz has been growing, especially overseas with it airing hot off the presses on all international MTV channels as soon as a few days after it airs here in the U.S.  And every week, the show has also regularly trended on twitter, including last week's episode where Shanley and Chris & Paige were trending topics besides the show itself.

   And its success have also cast a halo effect on two social media pen pals too. Last Friday, my good buddy Andrew Kirk, who also happened to discover this show too, had his most-viewed web chat ever when he landed the first SpreeCast interview with Shanley, and more than 5,000 views of that interview were recorded, blowing away the number for his most-viewed interview on either his SpreeCasts or Blog Talk Radio podcasts which normally feature those from The Real World or Challenges. And for me, articles relating to Are You The One?, including our SocialPulse diaries of the episodes as the cast saw it when the show airs, have made up a good chunk of my DCBLOG traffic in recent weeks as well with fans wanting to catch up on the show's twitter conversation. I've had hundreds of hits on my blog in the past few weeks, including from those in Brazil, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Belgium, Spain and as far as China, wanting to see what it's like watching and tweeting along with this show. Yes, I do gather all of their tweets, even while they air three hours before me, so everyone can catch up. It's a long process but worth it.

This is not the first time that one MTV show has seen great interest thanks to airing right after another popular MTV show. Catfish: The TV Show garnered tremendous interest in the world of online dating and got tremendous viewership following Teen Wolf in its first year (Mondays at 11pm) that, for its second season it moved an hour early and to Tuesday last summer. Back in the days when it was just a half-hour show, The Real World helped launch two shows to success: The Osbournes (which aired after RW Chicago, Vegas, Paris and SD1) and the first season of Laguna Beach (which aired after RW Philly and moved to Mondays a year later).

    So before you can go off even further on the Teen Mom girls, their significant others, their families and their babies, please be aware that this group has become the group that not only many young women can thank for helping fuel the discussion over teen pregnancy, but also formwhich twenty of your favorite singles can thank for giving them the lead in to what is my guilty pleasure and joining Real World Ex-Plosion as the favorite show of the moment for me.

DCBLOG and @DC408dxtr on Twitter is where my coverage of Real World Ex-Plosion and Are You The One? lives, with twitter alerts to interviews, articles and conversations with the cast, live tweeting of episodes, our SocialPulse diaries and more here on the Blog from my point of view. And I'll be live tweeting the episodes of both shows this week, and post a twitter diary of them the next day. Plus, keep an eye out later tonight or tomorrow for a post covering Mardi Gras, and prior to Wednesday's RW episode, we will have the latest edition of Fan's View with how one fan saw last week's RW Ex-Plosion After Show. For now, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed both this post and Are You The One? so far. And until we blog again later, have fun and enjoy Tuesday's episode.

- DC