The future looks uncertain for The Real Housewives of New York City after multiple attempts to refresh the show have failed to capture viewer attention. If you’ve been following reality television ratings, you know the stakes are high for Bravo’s flagship franchise.
‘RHONY’ Season 16 is a rating dud, insiders say
On September 8, RHONY returned to Bravo for its 16th season. Just 371,000 viewers tuned in to watch the season premiere live, according to Radar Online, despite the much-hyped return for former cast member Carole Radziwill. That’s a number that had network insiders sweating, especially with all the buzz surrounding reality television ratings across streaming platforms.
Those traditional TV viewership numbers are low, but what’s really concerning is the paltry audience on other platforms. Even with streaming on Peacock accounted for, the premiere only had an audience of 1.8 million, Radar claims.
Housewives producer Andy Cohen has repeatedly said that real-time TV ratings are not the best metric by which to judge a Bravo show’s success or failure.
“I start getting things from people telling me how Beverly Hills sucks and how the ratings are so bad for Vanderpump Rules,” Cohen said during a 2025 episode of SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live.
“First of all, you don’t know the ratings for Vanderpump Rules,” he continued. “We don’t look at live ratings. I haven’t looked at a live rating for anything on Bravo. You know what the live ratings are? Hashmarks. It’s delayed, it’s DVR, and it’s Peacock.”
Success is “not about the live ratings anymore,” Cohen added.
The current season of RHONY‘s live ratings aren’t that far off from other Bravo shows, including RHOBH, Vanderpump Rules, and Next Gen NYC. But its lackluster performance on streaming could be a cause for concern.
Bravo thought Carole Radziwill was a ‘secret weapon’
Radziwill’s return was supposed to revive interest in RHONY, which already introduced an entirely new cast in season 14. Her connection to the original cast and her ties to the Kennedy family seemed like the perfect way to introduce new life into the struggling Housewives franchise. But so far, that hasn’t panned out.
“Carole was supposed to save the show,” an insider told Radar. “With numbers like that, how does it survive?”
Bravo and Cohen have previously denied rumors that RHONY was on the verge of being canceled. But if the network is unimpressed with the ratings, the show could suffer the same fate of other Housewives franchises that have been put on indefinite pause, including The Real Housewives of Dallas and The Real Housewives of Miami.
“They thought Carole was the secret weapon,” a network insider told Rob Shuter’s Naughty But Nice substack. “She connected the new cast to the old RHONY that viewers loved. The hope was that bringing her back would create an event. That simply didn’t happen on traditional TV.”
“They had Carole, the Kennedys and the headlines — and viewers still didn’t rush back,” the source added. “That’s what makes the number sting.”
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