Wednesday move causes Amazing Race 9 to lose viewers

CBS moved The Amazing Race 9 to Wednesday because it was suffering from low ratings in its Tuesday at 10 p.m. timeslot, but in its new home, the show performed worse.

Wednesday’s episode was watched by 8.11 million viewers, down from the 9.2 million viewers who watched the previous Tuesday, which previously the season’s worst night. Worse, the show “posted a 3.0 overnight rating among viewers 18-49 in its new Wednesday 8 p.m. timeslot, down 23 percent from the 3.9 it had averaged through five Tuesday 10 p.m. episodes,” Media Life Magazine reports.

Curiously, CBS issued a spin-heavy press release to brag about the ratings. The release’s title says the race “finds success at its new Wednesday pit stop,” and in it, the network says the show “improved upon the week ago time period averages by double digit percentages while adding more than two million viewers.” However, that’s a pretty disingenuous way to describe the ratings, because the show performed better than the comedies CBS was airing Wednesday nights, not better than it was doing on Tuesdays.