The season 13 premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race is the most-watched premiere in the show’s history.
According to Deadline, the RuPaul Charles-created reality series earned 1.3 million total viewers, capturing the 18 to 49 age primetime viewing bracket. The number comes from the premiere simulcasting on numerous ViacomCBS networks, including Logo, The CW, MTV, MTV2 and PopTV as well as its home network, VH1. This is a part of a larger push of synergy between all of the ViacomCBS brands, such as the establishment of the SHOxBET joint network from BET and Showtime.
Individually, VH1 had 525,000 viewers with The CW coming in second with 478,000 viewers. PopTV came in third with 116,000 viewers followed by MTV with 111,000. Logo had 58,000 viewers and MTV2 rounded out the simulcast with 27,000 viewers.
The theme of this season is “New Year, New Ru,” promising unexpected twists alongside a brand new runway and judging panel outfitted for COVID-19 protocol. The premiere episode was unprecedented, splitting up the queens in pairs as they had to lip-sync right after walking through the workroom doors.
This season’s queens include Denali (Chicago, IL), Elliott with 2 Ts (Las Vegas, NV), Gottmik (Los Angeles, CA), Joey Jay (Phoenix, AZ), Kahmora Hall (Chicago, IL), Kandy Muse (New York, NY), LaLa Ri (Atlanta, GA), Olivia Lux (New York, NY), Rosé (New York, NY), Symone (Los Angeles, CA), Tamisha Iman (Atlanta, GA) ,Tina Burner (New York, NY), and Utica Queen (Minneapolis, MN).
