MTV’s ‘Real Friends of WeHo’ Fiasco Is Dragging ‘Drag Race’ Down in More than Ratings

Well, we got it — “it” being the ratings from Friday night’s highly controversial debut of MTV’s The Real Friends of WeHo following a new, shortened episode RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15. And, predictably, the ratings are not cute.

Before we break all that down, though, let’s get on the same page, re: this scenario. RuPaul’s Drag Race spent the six previous seasons on VH1, with the previous five seasons presented as 90-minute episodes. It was announced that the show would move to MTV for it’s 15th season, where it would act as a lead-in to a new docu-soap, The Real Friends of WeHo. Additionally, Drag Race Season 15 would be edited down from 90 minutes to 60 and Real Friends would be dropped in between Drag Race and its companion show, RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked. And now that we’ve seen the ratings from the first full night of MTV’s new, LGBTQ+-themed Friday night lineup, we have a better idea of how this is all playing out in the real world — and not just on Twitter.

• 8:00 p.m. ET — RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 4 — 578,000 viewers
• 9:01 p.m. ET — The Real Friends of WeHo Season 1, Episode 1 — 186,000 viewers
• 10:03 p.m. ET — RuPaul’s Drag Race Untucked Season 14, Episode 4 — 214,000 viewers

So, initially, yikes. Granted, if you saw the joke tweets circulating the day after the premiere claiming that 20,000 people tuned in for Real Friends, the actual number might seem impressive. And yeah, that tweet touting 20,000 viewers was a joke from a now silenced parody account. Still, 186,000 is not good. For comparison, 462,000 people tuned into Candace Cameron Bure’s Christmas movie a few months ago, and that was considered to be a ratings fiasco — and yes, I’m using that as comparison because holiday TV movies are the only other genre that I’ve done extensive ratings research into.

But let’s take a deeper look and see how all parties involved have been affected by The WeHo Effect. First, RuPaul’s Drag Race:

Since Drag Race leads off the night, it’s still doing fine. Yes, it’s charting towards the bottom in comparison with other seasons from the VH1 era (Seasons 9-14), but it’s performing within the usual range. The network switch hasn’t boosted the numbers significantly and, four episodes in, the series isn’t hitting the same highs as Season 10 or 12. Still, this is business as usual.

If those numbers look low compared to Drag Race’s cultural impact, remember that Drag Race is probably the only non-sports programming that is primarily watched in large groups at bars across the country. For evidence of how that may impact ratings, look at Season 12’s ratings above: the first three episodes all aired pre-COVID, and the fourth episode aired on March 20, 2020 — just after the first statewide stay-at-home orders were issued. The ratings jump up by 142K. And I’m not going to go grab all the numbers for every episode of Drag Race, but I will tell you that Season 12 peaked with 731K viewers on April 10, 2020, which may be a more accurate reading of how many individuals actually watch the show.

Now let’s look at Untucked:

This is the problem. Now that it’s separated from Drag Race and has Real Friends of WeHo as a lead-in, Untucked has tanked. The ratings for the most recent episode — 214,000 viewers —  were the lowest in the show’s televised history, since it became part of a two-hour programming block of Drag Race in 2018. And just a note: the first two episodes of Untucked this season were aired back to back on the same night, which is why the second episode from Season 15’s Untucked is also rated so low. Episode 3 bounced back a bit, and then Episode 4 of Untucked fell hard.

This is a problem for MTV and Drag Race both commercially and artistically. On the commercial side, yeah, it’s not good that MTV made such a big deal out of moving Drag Race only to have the ratings average out worse (avg. 326K viewers) than ratings for the same Friday night last year when MTV just showed two hours of Ridiculousness (avg. 416K viewers).

Mind you, Drag Race on MTV was performing better than old Ridiculousness for the first three weeks of this season before they added WeHo. Episodes of Drag Race and Untucked on MTV in 2023 were averaging out to around 500K compared to 375K for Ridiculousness on those same Fridays in 2022. Granted that’s still down from when Drag Race was on VH1 in 2022 and averaging 533K against Ridiculousness‘ 375K.

But this is also a problem for Drag Race artistically, because if you were one of the 178K viewers who watched Drag Race and did not come back an hour later for Untucked, you missed out on all of the emotional buildup and release for a storyline that has been at the forefront of the season so far — and there was room for none of that in the actual episode of Drag Race because the new 60-minute edit has jettisoned a lot of the show’s emotional content.

MTV wanted to create a new lineup of programming designed to capitalize on Drag Race’s devoted, pre-existing fanbase. They could have kept that proven lineup — 90 minutes of Drag Race followed by a half-hour Untucked — and tacked Real Friends of WeHo onto the end of it. Drag Race would be whole, Untucked’s ratings would remain steady, and haters would have a lot less ammunition against Real Friends of WeHo. Hell, Real Friends would probably have performed better in the ratings if it was just seen as a new show and not a harbinger of the apopalopkalips! But nope, MTV needed that third episode of Ridiculousness in the Friday lineup, so they took 30 minutes from the flagship series and separated it from its oftentimes narratively essential companion series. All of this in order to launch a show about six gay guys going on produced playdates and getting into fights over party invites. The result: a Drag Race that feels chopped up, a whole lot of messy drama as the Real Friends fight critics, and an Untucked that few are watching.

There’s still time to fix this madness, though. We know that Drag Race can re-edit a season as it airs. Also, the choppiness of these shorter episodes makes me wonder if 90-minute versions already exist and we’re seeing quick hatchet jobs on MTV. The network doesn’t even have to cancel Real Friends of WeHo; just move it to after Untucked. No matter what, changes have to be made. MTV’s trying to get a new lineup popping, but all of this feels like a bunch of ridiculousness.