There are no sure things in TV but, as acquisitions go, CNBC winning the rights to repeats of business reality show “Shark Tank” is about as perfect a match one could hope to find.
While “Shark Tank” is averaging 7.9 million viewers in its current fifth season on ABC — up 16 percent, on track for its best season yet — it’s also brought CNBC its own ratings success.
Since debuting on the network last month, “Shark Tank” repeats have garnered CNBC its largest prime-time audience (596,000 viewers) in five years — since the peak of the financial crisis in December 2008.
The series — which has aspiring entrepreneurs pitch business ideas to a panel of potential investors (“the sharks”) like Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and real estate magnate Barbara Corcoran — has steadily grown in popularity since it debuted on ABC in 2009.
“It’s business, it’s deal-making, it’s opportunity, it’s the entrepreneurial spirit, so it really speaks to all the things that we’re interested in,” says CNBC’s Jim Ackerman, senior VP of prime time alternative programming.
Airing Tuesdays from 8 p.m. to midnight, “Shark Tank” averaged 541,000 total viewers in January — more than any prime-time show on CNN that month, as several news reports gleefully pointed out.
It also appeals to a young audience, drawing 276,000 viewers (three times CNBC’s year-ago average) in the key advertising demo of adults 25-54, making it the No. 6 show in all of cable news.
“ ‘Shark Tank’ has delivered a much larger audience than we’ve seen in quite a few years. It’s delivered hundreds of thousands of new viewers, younger viewers, people who have never come to CNBC before,” Ackerman says.
More importantly, the network now has a franchise to boost its CNBC Prime lineup of original reality shows, starting with the Season Two premiere of “The Profit” on Feb. 25 at 10 p.m. The show, which follows Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis as he invests his own money in struggling small businesses, will be sandwiched between “Shark Tank” repeats.
“I would think that people who enjoy and love ‘Shark Tank’ — the deal-making and entrepreneurial spirit, the play-along — would really enjoy ‘The Profit’ as well,” Ackerman says. “I think those viewers will stick around.”
In addition to driving a more sizable lead-in audience to its original shows, “Shark Tank” will be used to drive awareness (through promos) to shows airing outside Tuesdays, like the sports betting series “Money Talks,” which premieres on Wednesdays in March.
Other new shows that can be sandwiched with “Shark Tank” on Tuesdays are in the works — many of which are being developed with the reality hit in mind.
“A lot of ideas that are in the pipeline or in production or pre-production I think will also be really well-suited to ‘Shark Tank,’” Ackerman says, “things with real investment, entrepreneurial spirit — good companion shows.”