Stars on Mars’s ratings have declined pretty much every week since the show’s premiere, except for a few positive spikes.
On Stars on Mars, celebrities compete against each other as they try to overcome various otherworldly challenges.
Although Stars on Mars started off with fair ratings and viewership numbers when it premiered in June of 2023, the show’s ratings and viewership numbers have never been able to reach these highs again.
About Stars on Mars
Stars on Mars takes the concept of reality television to a whole new world – literally.
This new Fox competition show pits several celebrities, including Lance Armstrong, Cat Cora, Marshawn Lynch, Adam Rippon, Tinashe and Ariel Winter, against each other in what is essentially a simulated mars-like environment.
Of course, the competition is not as simple as comparing how these celebrities interact in this new environment.
During each episode, the celebrities have to select a new “Base Commander” and “Mission Specialist” to assist them in space-voyager-type challenges. Thereafter, the “least mission critical” member of the team is put up for elimination.
Stars on Mars ratings continue to drop
The celebrity appeal and Stars on Mars’s new spin on the classic reality competition format certainly proved interesting enough to draw in a crowd initially.
The very first episode of Stars on Mars, which aired on June 5, 2023, brought in about 1.323 million live and same-day viewers (including instances in which the show was recorded for DVR).
This episode also scored a fair 0.24 rating in the crucial 18 to 49 demographic.
However, although promising new shows usually trend upwards in ratings after their premiere episodes, as the stakes in the competition get higher, Stars on Mars has not managed to reach this bar set by its first episode, ever again.
The second episode of the show, which aired a week later, on June 12, immediately saw a drop of over 25 percent in viewership and unfortunately, this downward trend did continue in the following week.
Things did start looking up in the Stars on Mars ratings by episode four and five, but by episode six, the show only managed to score a rating of 0.18 in the 8 to 49 demographic, even though the viewership numbers had improved slightly to 1.008 million viewers.
It is too early to get an accurate reading of Stars on Mars’s most recent seventh episode, which aired on July 24, but at this point, the show has amassed an average score of 0.19 in the 18 to 49 demographic and has not even reached an average of 1 million viewers per episode in its first season.
It seems highly unlikely that Stars on Mars’s ratings will ever be as good as they were for that first episode.
Why does Stars on Mars’s ratings keep dropping?
There are many reasons why a show like Stars on Mars may not be performing as expected when it comes to viewership and ratings.
Stars on Mars does share the competitive aspect of other successful shows like Celebrity Family Feud (for which a repeat airing brought in about 3.64 million viewers in the first week of June).
But it does not quite have the high stakes that other competition shows like American Ninja Warrior has.
American Ninja Warrior scored a 0.43 rating in the 18 to 49 demographic in the first week of June and brought in 3.09 million viewers to NBC.
What do the viewer reviews have to say?
By now, it is fairly common knowledge that viewership numbers and ratings are not always an accurate reflection of how good a show is.
Unfortunately, in this case, the user reviews and ratings of Stars on Mars are not much better than the official viewership numbers and demographic ratings.
Stars on Mars has only scored a 5.2 out of 10 on IMDb and a meager 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes for its Audience Score.
Stars on Mars compared to other shows
Although Stars on Mars’s ratings have not necessarily been horrible, they have also not been fantastic. Stars on Mars airs at 8 p.m. ET, so it is a direct competitor of WWE: RAW (which airs on USA).
WWE: RAW has always been immensely popular, and comparing its showstopper first hour 0.53 rating in the 18 to 49 demographic and 1.827 million viewer total to Stars on Mars’s very first episode, really puts things into perspective.
Fox’s other primetime show this season, Crime Scene Kitchen, has also managed to inch out Stars on Mars in terms of ratings.
It scored a season average rating of 0.20 in the 19 to 49 demographic and 1.079 million average viewers thus far.
