Duck Dynasty Ratings Recover This Week, Wine Sales Brisk As Well

Duck Dynasty recovered from a two-week ratings slump with Wednesday night’s airing of Season Five, Episode Eight, again winning the night on cable, far outpacing all competition. Despite some sliding ratings this season, the Duck Dynasty crew still commands Wednesday nights on cable TV, topping the ratings for every episode so far this season.

The 10 pm airing of Duck Dynasty on the A&E Network pulled in 6.1 million viewers. That’s an increase of 926,000 from the February 26 show — which itself experienced a slight drop from the February 19 broadcast which pulled in 5.5 million.

After last night, the Duck Dynasty ratings machine seems to be fixing itself. Numbers are still down from the 8.5 million who watched the Season Five premiere — and from the lofty heights of nearly 12 million who tuned in for the Season Four premier in August of last year.

Just to give some perspective on the Duck Dynasty ratings powerhouse, if the show had aired at 10 pm on a major broadcast network Wednesday night, it would have finished second in its time slot, edging NBC’s Chicago PD by about 900,000 viewers. On the big networks, the 10 pm slot was won by the old warhorse CSI, which drew 9.29 million pairs of eyeballs.

For the whole night, Duck Dynasty‘s cable rating would have placed it seventh out of the 14 shows that aired on CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox in Wednesday prime time.

Finishing a distant second on cable Wednesday night was the A&E show that follows Duck Dynasty, the Mark Wahblerg reality vehicle Wahlburgers, which retained less than half of the Duck Dynasty audience, with 2,899,000 viewers.

The Duck Dynasty clan, under the Roberston family’s corporate name Duck Commander, has been licensing its brand to a variety of other endeavors recently, including a line of freeze-dried foods, a Caribbean cruise and a college football bowl game.

But wine? Does the wine-sipping crowd really feel much affinity for the backwater antics of the Duck Dynasty set?

Apparently — yes.

Manufactured by the Napa Valley winery Trinchero Family Estates, Duck Commander wines go for about 10 bucks a bottle and come in chardonnay and pink moscato varietals, as well as a red blend.

Duck Dynasty seems to rule the world of cheap wines as well as cable TV. The wines have sold about 100,000 cases in the past four months.