Duck Dynasty Ratings Dip Day Before Freeze-Dried Meal Tie-In Announced

Duck Dynasty took another dip in the ratings Wednesday night, just hours before the Roberston clan invited its fans to dip into a new line of freeze-dried meals, marketed under their family’s Duck Commander brand name.

According to a press release issued Thursday by the Salt Lake City-based firm Food For Health International, the company has licensed the Duck Commander brand name to market a line of “Duck Commander Meals,” which come in packaging bearing the scowling likenesses of the hirsute stars of the A&E reality hit Duck Dynasty.

The line of foods, in addition to individual boil-in-bag meals, includes a “Duck Commander Weekend Food Pack” which contains enough freeze-dried grub to feed one hungry person for three days during presumably, a Duck Dynasty style weekend hunting trip.

“Our family franchises are built on hard work, family values and our great American heritage,” Willie Robertson, the company’s CEO said in the press release. “We hope the Duck Commander Meals will help families take command of their hunger with fast-fixin’ food that’s whisker-lickin’ good. Happy, happy, happy!”

The ratings for Duck Dynasty may not be making the Robertson bunch quite as happy as their new food line, however. Wednesday night’s episode, the fifth of Duck Dynasty Season Five, scored a 2.3 rating among the key 18-49 demographic — a dip from he previous episode’s 2.5.

That translates to just under 5.5 million Duck Dynasty viewers — down about a million pairs of eyeballs from Episode Four. A pair of Big Bang Theory reruns on TBS took the second and third place positions for the night.

But the show that follows Duck Dynasty at 10:30 pm on A&E, Wahlburgers, finished second among original programming with a 1.2 rating and slightly fewer than 2.7 million viewers tuning in.

Wahlburgers carries some Hollywood star power, centering around a restaurant run by the family of Lone Survivor star Mark Wahlberg and Donnie Wahlberg, star of the CBS cop drama Blue Bloods.

After another Big Bang Theory repeat, the long running MTV reality show Real World, with its new Real World Ex-Plosion format came in sixth, probably hurt by going head-to-head at 10pm with Duck Dynasty.