“Cash Pad” hasn’t exactly been a cash cow for CNBC, which was banking on converting some “Bachelorette” viewers into fans of its JoJo Fletcher and Jordan Rodgers short-term rental renovation series.
Unfortunately, that hasn’t worked out in terms of Nielsen ratings.
In Live + Same Day numbers, “Cash Pad” has averaged an unimpressive 134,000 total viewers, with just 45,000 of those coming from the adults 18-49 demographic. Among those ages 25-54, the average is slightly higher at 51,000 viewers per episode.
With the benefit of a week of DVR viewing, “Cash Pad” has averaged 230,000 total viewers per episode, with 73,000 of those coming from the 18-49 demo. That number is again slightly larger in the 25-54 demo, with 87,000 audience members existing in that older age range.
Those numbers are so bad… (“How bad are they?”)
“Cash Pad’s” 18-49 audiences are smaller than the ones for Animal Planet’s “Fish or Die” and Oxygen’s “Killer Affair,” to name just a few of a few hundred higher-rated primetime cable entertainment series. Although the tallies are a little larger among adults 25-54, “Cash Pad” actually tends to drop down a few more slots in the cable rankings there.
In all three of the demos we studied, “Cash Pad” ranked no higher than No. 242 out of the 260 Nielsen-rated basic-cable entertainment shows.
“Cash Pad” is the lowest-rated CNBC primetime original series. That’s an even more damning statistic when you consider that CNBC Prime isn’t exactly lighting the world on fire overall, which probably explains why the network just hired Discovery Channel executive Denise Contis to be its new head of primetime content.
You would think that means we’ll never hear the words “Cash Pad” and “Season 2” together. We can actually help make a case for more — though maybe not a *strong* case.
First, it’s hard to come up with a unique take in 2019 amid all the home-renovation show clutter, but with their Airbnb-centric approach, former “Bachelorette” Fletcher and her beau — TV and real-life — actually did just that.
Plus, the “Cash Pad” audience may be small, but it is mightier in certain ways than CNBC’s averages in the time period had previously been. The linear TV viewers for “Cash Pad” are younger, more affluent and more female than the cable channel was getting. They are also more social media savvy — and active.
And of course, there’s the viewing Nielsen doesn’t measure — yet, at least. “Cash Pad” racked up 101,000 views of its pilot episode on YouTube with the first week of availability, a person with knowledge of that data told TheWrap. But even “pad”-ding its stats with those clicks, “Cash Pad” has been anything but money in the bank for CNBC.