WE TV Rides Multiple Wave With Masches' Sextuplets
Family Realithy Series Grows From High-Rated Special
Staff Staff -- Multichannel News, 6/7/2009 2:02:00 AM
Can't get enough of the real-life drama of TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8 and the super-sized family reality genre? WE TV will step up the TV diaper quotient with the June 11 debut of Raising Sextuplets, a six-part series focusing on the six 2-year-old Masche kids and their parents, Jenny and Bryan.The network's 2008 special on the sextuplets' birth was the third-most watched special in WE's history, drawing 248,000 women ages 18 to 49.
WE TV president and general manager Kim Martin is confident viewers who tune into the series won't see a Jon and Kate Gosselin-like family train wreck with the Masche clan. Martin declined to comment directly on the TLC series, which has drawn nearly 20 million viewers in the first two weeks since debuting its fifth season on May 25. But she did address the Masches.
"Jenny and Brian have a strong marriage and they are surrounded by a great support system with their parents, their nieces, their neighbors - they have a lot of people helping them," Martin said. "They're first-time parents so I think that's why people will be interested in their story."
Martin also doesn't see any viewer fatigue on the horizon for the genre.
"I think people are definitely interested in couples who are raising multiples - the lifestyle is so chaotic, but its fun TV," she said.
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