Heavy Metal singer Don Dokken with Eddie Trunk of That Metal Show

"That Metal Show" & "Ex. Wives of Rock" make the "Least Watched Shows on TV" top 35 list with 0.0 total viewers!
Posted By: Metal Sludge

0.0 Viewers--  There are many channels in the United States, from the massive (USA, CNN, etc.) to the tiny. So many, in fact, that it does seem possible that at some hours of the day, no one — as in zero humans — is watching them. It's also possible, of course, that this is where the problems of Nielsen Media Research, which has a monopoly on quantifying ratings, show themselves. If 324 ordinary Joe Shmoes — or 4,000 — did, in fact, watch one of the shows below, but none of those Joe Shmoes is in a Nielsen household, then those viewings do not register. Or, as Nielsen put it when I posed this question to them recently, the shows at the very bottom of the weekly cable list, the ones that get 0.0 total viewers, do not meet "minimum reporting thresholds."

And yet, it does stand to reason that with hundreds and hundreds of available channels, there could be instances every week when not a single soul is tuning in to certain shows. When there are no longer broadcast networks and cable channels, and everything is digital and on-demand, we can look back at this period and marvel at its ridiculous economics.

I took a random week (Feb. 25-March 3) and delved into what sorts of shows — and cable channels — are members of the Zero Club. I excluded paid programming. And that left 35 shows that got zeros. You did not watch them. I did not watch them either. But here they are.


Metal Sludge just pulled quotes for the 'metal' related shows noted below.

21) "For What It's Worth" (March 2, 3:30 a.m.) and 22) "That Metal Show 4" (March 3, 2:30 a.m.), VH1 Classic

VH1 Classic isn't doing much better than Tr3s, frankly — it's in the basement too, hanging out with its friend Tr3s. (At least I hope they're friends.) For What It's Worth is Gary Dell'Abate of Howard Stern fame's new Antiques Roadshow-like series about pop culture memorabilia. Its best showing of the week drew 56,000 viewers. The 3:30 a.m. on early Saturday morning got 56,000 fewer than that. Baba Booey indeed! He wasn't alone in Zero Club among VH1 Classic shows: That Metal Show 4 is a talk show about, you know, metal, and this was a rerun; there haven't been any new episodes since the fall.

Blue one of the stars of "Ex. Wives of Rock"

24) "Trending 10" (Feb. 25, 4 a.m.) and 25) "Ex-Wives of Rock" (Feb. 25, 2:30 a.m.), Fuse

Trending 10 is a celebrity/pop-culture news show, as its name suggests. It's on weeknights at 7:30 p.m. Very few people watch it then too; its best-rated episode of the week drew 54,000 viewers. Still, that is more than zero viewers. There was another Fuse show that night that drew an audience of zero: an airing of Ex-Wives of Rock, a Canadian reality show about the ex-wives of such metal luminaries as Vince Neil and Jani Lane. Which sounds fantastic!

So annoyed that I don't get Fuse. Time Warner Cable, damn you! Damn you to hell. (Update: Fuse is available on Time Warner Cable; I have no idea why it turned up as unavailable when I did the search the first time. However, I do not take back my damning of Time Warner Cable. Because they are still terrible.)



To see the FULL LIST go check out the article at BuzzFeed.

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