ABC’s 2-hour special preview of Wipeout snuck into the top ten in New York this past week.
Here’s how Slate’s Troy Patterson described the show in the summer of 2008:
In the course of attempting masochistic physical challenges, its contestants fall down very often, and we watch these plunges in sadistic slow-motion replay, with the whole Telestrator treatment and everything. The sideline reporter makes the cutest little wince whenever a contestant falls off “the Dreadmill” and into a pit of foam and flour. Meanwhile, back in front of a cheap green screen, the hosts snark nonstop about the contestants’ athleticism and sweat stains and haircuts and, good post-postmodern wiseasses that they are, also about the slo-mo replays. Wipeout dresses up the usual network idiocy with cable-style snark (think Best Week Ever) and an exuberant lack of decency that’s pure Internet—a TMZ-esque disregard for mercy, an anonymous blog commentor’s sense of self-restraint.
(1) Fox-5….Glee….1,070,000
(2) ABC-7….NBC Finals: Game 2….985,000
(3) CBS-2….60 Minutes….842,000
(4) ABC-7….NBA Finals: Game 1….798,000
(5) NBC-4….America’s Got Talent (TU)….782,000
(6) CBS-2….Two & Half Men….743,000
(7) ABC-7….Wipeout….704,000
(8) Fox-5….So You Think You Can Dance?….686,000
(9) NBC-4….America’s Got Talent (WE)….673,000
(10) CBS-2….NCIS….655,000
(Top 10 shows in New York, May 31 to June 6, according to Nielsen Data (total viewers, time shifting/DVR not included)
