Duck Dynasty Ratings Drop Again, But Still Wins Night In Cable Race

Duck Dynasty, after a ratings rally in the third week of Season Five last week, took another drop last night. After scoring a healthy 3.0 rating in the crucial 18-49 year old age group last week, the redneck reality show dipped back down to 2.5 for the Wednesday, February 5 episode.

Nonetheless, the rating was healthy enough to lead Duck Dynasty to another Wednesday night victory among all cable shows. Duck Dynasty topped the night as it has each of the four weeks so far in Season Five.

The Mark Wahlberg-generated reality series, Wahlburgers, also took a dip, likely suffering from the weaker Duck Dynasty lead-in. But in the absence of usual second-pace finisher American Horror Story, Wahlburgers managed to squeak into the second-ranked cable spot last night, with a 1.5 rating, down somewhat from its 1.7 of the previous week.

Wahlburgers, similar to Duck Dynasty, follows a wealthy family as they try to keep a business running smoothly. But where Duck Dynasty is about a family of hillbillies who struck it rich selling duck hunting gear, Wahlburgers, as the name implies, is about a burger joint operated by Paul Wahlberg, brother of movie stars Mark and Donnie Wahlberg.

Duck Dynasty also pulled in more than 6.5 million sets of eyeballs last night, almost twice as many as Wahlburgers, which had just under 3.5 million viewers.

An episode of Family Guy on Adult Swim took third place with 2.6 million viewers at 11:30 pm.

The Robertson clan at the center of Duck Dynasty had their eyes on another kind of race this week. Their company, Duck Commander, is now an official NASCAR sponsor. The April 6 Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway will now be known as the Duck Commander 500, and the stars of Duck Dynasty will come out in force to promote the event.

“This is perhaps the most unique sponsorship in professional sports because not only does this come with special branding, it comes with celebrity spokespeople that are followed by tens of millions of people every week,” the racetrack’s president Eddie Gossage told ESPN.

In other words, NASCAR fans in Texas can expect to see plenty of the Duck Dynasty cast in person at the racetrack in the week leading up the NASCAR showdown.