PODCAST #425 WITH SUZANA SOMERS (@BACHELORDATA) TRANSCRIPT
You are listening to the Reality Steve podcast with your host, Reality Steve. He’s got all the latest info and behind the scenes juice on Grant’s upcoming season of The Bachelor and interviewing some of your favorite reality stars. Now here’s Reality Steve.
What’s up, everybody. Welcome to podcast number 425. I’m your host, reality. Steve. Thank you all for tuning in on this Thursday. A great interview with bachelor data. Susanna summer’s coming today. Multi time guest on the show. You love her information. I know I do. And with grants, women dropping early this week, had to bring her on to talk about the trends.
Who’s got the followers. We talk about some. Maybe. Additions or improvements we would make to not only bachelor in paradise. But also the tell all shows we talk about grant season. We talk about the lack of promotion on grant season, a lot to get into with Susanna today, and we will get to all that momentarily before we get to that.
Just wanted to say a couple of things that were on the daily roundup. Number one, obviously. Devastation happening in Southern California right now. Thoughts and prayers out to everybody, but thoughts and prayers don’t do much. In fact, they don’t do anything. I do care. I used to live in Southern California for pretty much my young adulthood from the ages of three through 31.
I lived in Southern California, not in the area that’s being devastated right now, but close. So, while my thoughts and prayers are out to those people. The better way to help is if you can donate anything, 5, 10, whatever, be sure you’re clicking on a correct link. Don’t get scammed by one of these places.
There are so many different links out there. If you follow bachelor nation people, especially ones that live in Southern California, they are tweeting out and posting stuff on their Instagram stories that have direct links to where you can donate. There are so many different places I’ve done. So, to Red Cross, I’ve also done it to.
Private stories that I’ve seen where I was just like, Oh, I feel awful. You know, I do what I can. I know, I know some people can’t right now. That’s totally fine, but if you can, please help out. Cause it’s devastating. And then the only other thing I’ll say is, and I mentioned it on the daily roundup. I just wish we could get out of, from politicizing this right now.
People don’t need to hear that right now. You know, there’s an absolute. Forest fire going on, destroying cities. I don’t think people need to hear about who’s to blame. And this is why we moved out of LA. And that does nobody that does no good for anybody right now, honestly. Like if you can tell me a reason why you need to say that right now.
I can’t think of one good reason why that needs to be said, why there needs to be name calling, why there needs to be sides being taken about this stuff happening and why it’s should have been preventable. Like it doesn’t matter. It can’t change anything right now. Houses, cities are being burned. Doesn’t matter.
Let’s stop talking about it. Stop politicizing it now. Also on the daily roundup earlier today, the weather here in Dallas, starting this morning, supposed to have two days of. Pretty good winter storm. According to the weather reports, two to five inches of snow out here. That might not mean a lot to you who live in the northeast, but for Dallas, we haven’t had snow in probably three or four years.
At least that I can remember. I could be off on my years, but it feel like, I feel like it snowed every You know, we’d get two or three days of snow a year. It gets cold. It gets in the teens out here at night, certainly in January and February. It definitely always our coldest months. And it’s just a matter of, are we going to get snow or are we not?
And it’s usually just, sometimes it’s a wintry mix. Sometimes we’ll get like some snowflakes, but nothing to, we’re supposed to get two to five inches. Now, starting on Saturday, it’s supposed to be mid to high forties. So whatever we get over the next two days will probably mostly be melted by the weekend.
But. They are prepping people saying could lose power, could lose Wi Fi service and I just want to throw it out there. I’ve never missed a daily roundup or a sports daily since I started July 22 and January of 2023 respectively for those shows. You’ve gotten a show every Monday through Friday. I’ve said the only way I would ever miss a show.
Would be obviously something devastating happening personally or something like that family related. I don’t even think about it, but The other thing would be some sort of technical issue. So just throwing it out there. I plan on having a show tomorrow I don’t see why I wouldn’t but if I have no Wi Fi service, I can’t upload my show so It might go out but every time I have had any sort of outage on Wi Fi And I’ve gotten it quite a few times.
It’s usually only out for minutes or maybe an hour or two. I’ve never been without Wi Fi service for like a full day. So I don’t think that’s going to happen, but just want to give people a heads up. Also on the daily roundup today, talk about the fact that Rachel Lindsay and Brian Abbasolo have finalized their divorce.
We saw what assets were split up, who got what. And the fact that Rachel has to fork over quite a pretty penny in the next eight days. And then the other half of what she owes at this date next year, but then they’re done. So I guess they agreed like he just wants, I don’t know if even if it was he wanted, she said fine or what, how it was decided.
I don’t really understand how divorces work like this and how things are split up, but basically she owes him 230 grand by eight days from now. So And then she owes him the other 230 grand next January 7th, 2026. And that’s it doesn’t owe a monthly spousal support anymore, which she was paying, which was to the tune of around 13 grand a month.
So she owes him 460, 000. Half of it in eight days, half of it January 7th of next year. And then that’s it. They’ve decided to move on from that still seems like a lot, but maybe I’m in the wrong here. Maybe that’s low that she got away with that. I have no idea. Also talk about the premiere episode of special forces last night.
Started with 16 people. Three of them are gone, including one of our own from bachelor nation. And I also talk about the challenge finale, which the karma points ended up being actually worthwhile. And played a role in determining the winner, but only on the women’s side, because there was zero drama on the men’s side of who was going to win.
And I said it last week, I was just like, how does, how does Jordan not win this thing outside of literally drowning or getting medically evacuated from the show? Cause something happened to him because he was winning every checkpoint. There was no way he wasn’t going to win. And the way they did the winners and told them.
It was obvious that they couldn’t hide it. It was just so obvious Jordan was going to win. And so I talk about all that on the daily roundup, which was posted a couple hours ago. All right, let’s get going. Podcast number four 25. All right, let’s bring her in. You know, her as bachelor data on Instagram.
She’s a multi time guest on this show. It is Susanna summer Susanna. Thanks for coming on.
Thanks for having me back.
This is the first time you’re on video and I didn’t want to say anything before I brought you on, but I was, I had like my fingers crossed and I didn’t want to tell you what to wear. I was just hoping we’d get a pink top on this video.
And there it is the pink hoodie. I,
I am a mess today. I was so not prepared for them to drop grants women yesterday. And I had so much work planned this week and I had to drop everything yesterday. I, and then you messaged me and you’re like, let’s talk all the data tomorrow on podcasts. And I was like, yeah, definitely.
And then I, I definitely didn’t have enough time to get ready.
That’s all right. I just wanted the pink. I wanted the pink top. That is like your signature. It’s like your signature thing, right? Like if you didn’t wear pink in a video, it’d be like, did she not do laundry this week?
Well, now I can’t, now I can’t this season because Joey’s women, the photos that they use, the backdrop is like this dark reddish brown.
And that’s not going to go with pink. So I have to change my entire color palette this season, which we’re going to file this under the first world problems. It’s going to push me on the color palette side. I’m going to learn some new color palettes, but Okay. Okay. I’m ready.
I don’t know how it works.
Can’t, can you take each of their bachelor bio photos and change out their background? Absolutely. And actually,
one of the big problems I have that I don’t think I’ve ever ranted about this, and I’ve never heard anyone rant about it, is the fact that for this franchise, I, I have, I have such a big peep about this.
For this franchise, the cast photos that they release, they don’t release the same prop ratio for each contestant. Yeah. So some contestants we get the full body image, and then other ones we get shoulders up. So what I end up having to do on a lot of photos, like yesterday’s, the ca after the cast drop, a few of the women.
I have to use like canvas AI expand feature to make the image longer so that it’ll fit in their face won’t like blow up in the ratio that I’m using the post. But yeah, no, there are ways I can on canvas. You can remove the background and I pull those photos, but it’s it’s tricky to make it look good. And then.
I mean, everybody knows it’s a red background. So I got to run with it because that’s what sticks in people’s heads. But that’s again, we’re filing this under the first world problems and it’s just going to push me on the data visualization side. So
well, with the cast being released yesterday, it’s first, you know, look back in September when they released the quote unquote potential 27 women for grant season.
You and I collab and we put it all together. You have it up on your Instagram. I put it on my Instagram stories and in my highlights of finding these women’s first and last names and their Instagram accounts. And we had everybody that day. So it’s been out there for three and a half months, but there’s like, there’s like, yeah, Ella.
Right. So for me, and I think for a lot of people, there’s like three different start times of the bachelor there is back in September when the women are first released, people will chime in, Oh, I like her. Oh, and I know her or whatever, or, Oh, she bullied me. She took my lunch money back, you know, 12 years ago.
And it’s like, and then they wanted her canceled. So then there’s that. And then there’s yesterday, which is granted. Even though it’s out there and you put it out there and she’s all batch, puts it out there and talks about it. And, and, and game of Rose as well. It’s still a subsection of the internet that talks about it.
And then to then yesterday is like, okay, now the public is now introduced to the women because they are officially out there and they’re all posting on their Instagrams. And then there’s premiere night where it’s like, okay, now I get to actually see them with my own three eyes. Three eyes, my own two eyes.
And so it’s, it’s just a weird dynamic because I see it every year. I get stuff sent to me back in September. I had some stuff sent to me yesterday and I’ll have some stuff come to me. On Monday, the 27th, it’s so weird how people consume the show now and how different levels it comes in at.
Yeah, I do feel like this like preseason buzz period, it’s been really dead this season and especially on the spoiler side of things, you know, I keep an eye on spoilers everywhere, obviously your page, but I also, You know, I try to keep an eye on the, like, the spoiler Reddit discussion threads and it’s been dead all season and I’m worried I, I told you ahead of time.
I’m going to try to not be pessimistic in this podcast, but I am a bit worried of how dead it’s been this season. Like, I mean, it was pretty dead between. Charity season and Joey’s, but not this quiet. That I’m hoping I’m hoping it gets better. And we saw that with Joey season, Joey season was like a slow start and it really picked up things to take talk and social media.
So, I’m still, I’m, I’m reserving hope. Yeah, I,
you’re not wrong there because let’s face it. The announcement of grant was so poorly done. So it was, it was the word it’s. Not only the worst, it’s probably the least marketable announcement they ever had. It was like he was eliminated on Jen season and then it went up on instagram that night.
You didn’t have him on Kimmel, you didn’t have him on G. M. A. He was a fifth place finisher. It just, it didn’t resonate. We never saw interviews with him right away. Just wasn’t done correctly and you know, they probably have their reasons, probably ones we’ll never at least publicly know about for some stuff privately, but it’s just the buzz around it just wasn’t great.
And he, like he said, he, you know, you could be outside the top four. It doesn’t happen often, but we know it does happen on occasion, but just the way they launched him as their bachelor was just so poorly done. And that’s got to contribute. to just this malaise in the off season.
It’s giving like last minute choice and who knows why, you know, I’m sure that they’re internal reasons why, but it’s kind of like Jen, right?
Like if Jen had, and we know now Jen found out after the finale that she was going to be on Nancy with the stars, if that had been planned before the finale, literally hours before the finale. They would have used that as a, a hero storyline. She’s going to come out on top of Devon, this horrible man, which ended up getting worse in the weeks following, but they could have used that as a plot line, right?
To build up that character storyline. Everything we watch on TV, everything is a storyline, regardless if it’s reality TV or not. So I’m not saying this is like, it’s fake, but we have to be intentional about how we build those stories to keep the audience engaged with Grant. But they didn’t show him last season.
So I think a lot of people are just like, who is, like, why are we rooting for him? And instead if they had chosen, like, again, if they were trying to go for, we want diversity and that’s why we chose Grant. Why didn’t they show us like that much of his storyline throughout the season, the way that we saw like Jonathan or other people of color on Jen’s season, you know, it would just, it felt very last minute.
And like, why wouldn’t you invest time building up that storyline to go off of Joey’s momentum and Jen’s momentum with Dancing with the Stars and everything to then have another successful season? Like, you have to, like, it’s business. Why wouldn’t they do that?
And we’ll get to it in a little bit later on in this, in this talk in regards to Grant’s season in terms of the length of it.
We haven’t seen a Bachelor season this short since probably, I mean, I’m talking Early two thousands. If I had to guess just an amount of episodes that he’s looking to get, but let’s, let’s talk about this launch yesterday. And since you dive into the numbers and you’re all into how this works with the women and followers and stuff like that any numbers jump out to you in the most versus the previous seasons on launch day, maybe versus just Joey’s women, these women, look, we know, unless you have some sort of past or you’re a former pageant queen or a model.
You’re probably going to have a relatively low follower count just because it’s probably just your friends and family that know who you are
or contact. Did anybody
jump out this year for versus this cast compared to Joey’s women of last season?
So we have a few women that have some pretty decent sized followings already to begin with.
So on the Instagram side of things we have, and I’m so sorry, we don’t, we, I haven’t watched any videos on how to say these women’s names. So if I mispronounce any. I’m going to get better throughout the season. It’s been 24 hours that I’ve been thinking about these women’s names. So Alicia she has 14, 000 followers on Instagram and on TikTok.
She has 24, 000. We’re going to talk a little bit about her to talk presence in just a second. Bailey has 12, 000, 17, 000 on Tik TOK. I’m going in order of Instagram Tik
TOK.
Carolina, she has 14, 000. I just found her Tik TOK or no, I haven’t found her Tik TOK yet. And then I think Carolina, she’s Miss USA.
Which one’s the one that’s Miss, Miss California.
We have a Miss California this year. I don’t even know if I do, if I did read it, I forgot.
I’ve got it in here in a second. Oh, no, it’s Alicia. Alicia is the one that was Miss California. Y’all, you gotta give me some grace. I’m still learning these women.
But yeah, we have a handful. Parisha, she has 11, 000 on Instagram. Rebecca has 31, 000. And then Zoe has 10, 000. So everybody else is, is under that. I
believe Rebecca, so she’s the leader, right? Rebecca 31. Is that the most you said? I believe she’s a she’s a model, so that makes, that makes sense. So that means, I mean, just going off the top of my head, that’s like six that were over 10, 000 out of 25.
Yeah,
which is pretty normal. I mean, a lot of people were like, Oh, this is such a normal cast size. And I was like, this is, this is actually pretty normal to have people who have over 10, 000 versus under 10, 000. I think a lot of people forget like Hannah Ann back on Peter season. She had like 30, 000 Maddie Pruitt had like 15, 000.
I think I need to pull up those numbers before I say in concrete, but like they had her, his women had a lot of followers before his season started filming. Like back in September, Hannah Ann had 34, 500, Maddie Pruitt had 7, 000 when she came back in November, she had 11, 000. We had contestants in that season that had over 100, 000 followers, you know, it’s, it’s not that uncommon and people, if you’ve heard me on this podcast, you know, I’ve had my little rant about it, but having people.
who already have a following on social media is vital for the success of this franchise. The only reason that Joey season took off initially is because Daisy and a few other contestants were creating so much content on TikTok that it ushered in this new generation of, Hey, we’re here. We’re also kind of cool.
Like Love Island. You should come watch our show because we have relatable contestants that make content that you like. And then they tuned in and then they fell in love with Joey. They fell in love with Kelsey and all these other contestants. But it’s actually a good thing to have a balance and have some contestants that last long enough on the season and are making viral content that get people and remind people to tune in each week.
Well, I think one thing yesterday that I brought up to you once this was all out and you put up your Instagram feed post on. All the women, their Instagram handles, and then their numbers for Instagram followers and Tik TOK followers was the one thing I pointed out to you was like, and I’m going to go over a mini spoiler here.
I’m not going to give an exact placement of where this woman finishes, but let’s just say there is a woman this year that goes pretty far. And when you put out your rankings yesterday, she was 25th out of 25 in terms of followers. She had less. Then a thousand followers. And by the time I had looked at your Instagram feed post and then went back to her, she had added over a thousand and she certainly had a 25th place now, but, and I don’t even know what she’s at right now.
I can even say it. It’s, it’s Latiya. And by the way, I was calling her Lydia. Because we don’t know how these women pronounce their names, but I had found out it’s Latia. She had 925 followers until yesterday, and now she’s probably over 2, if I had to guess. She said 1, 900. 1, 900? Okay. So yeah, but she was at 925 and she was ranked 25th out of 25 on your list of women at the time you posted yesterday.
But I don’t think she had gone public by the time you posted. And then she did, I think shortly thereafter. So that’s obviously why these women aren’t technically not allowed to go public until yesterday when ABC officially announces them as contestants, which has changed back in the day. You were allowed to go public the second you were eliminated from the show, but then the show realized, Holy shit, we’re giving away our elimination order because people are following this stuff.
And if somebody had 1000 followers. And then all of a sudden they had 1500. Clearly they’re not on the show anymore. Cause we know that these women don’t have their phones during the show. So, I mean, guess good on them for the show, but it usually turned into once all of filming is over, these women could go back on their Instagram now.
Filming ended for grant season, literally the first week in November, and yet they’re not allowed to go on their Instagram and go public for another two months, which was what, January 7th, yesterday the date. So that’s what I mean, like that adds to it. Why aren’t you letting these women go back to your old rule of no, maybe you don’t get your phone back and can go on public once you get eliminated.
But once all the filming is over, let all the women go on social media. I don’t see a problem with that.
Yeah, well, two things there. Number one, there is one contestant who violated that and posted. Oh, wait. No, you said it ended. Begin the 1st week of November.
Yeah, around or like, end of I think the final row.
Ceremony was either October. I want to say it was October 30th or October 31st. I’d have to look at it, but
yeah, they wrapped
normally like the week
before Thanksgiving.
Yeah, no, they wrapped definitely two weeks early this year.
Cause I was going to say, I was, I was looking through their tick tock accounts cause I’ve now found 17 of their tick tock accounts between messaging them batch makers helped in, in a few different ways.
And one of them Savannah, she posted on November 20th and I was like. I wanted to send her a message to be like, hey, you’re not supposed to post during filming, but I guess filming finished early. So I’m glad I didn’t send that. But I think it is a good thing though, because I, like, I’ve already seen people are sleuthing me.
Like, what are they liking on tick tock? What are they reposting? And what message is it sending? And making them wait a little bit longer to cool off with their feelings post filming. I have thoughts. I looked through their TikToks. I have thoughts on some of these contestants and I want to know if my thoughts are correct on who the villain is based on their content over there.
Oh, so you’ve seen, I don’t, I don’t follow them on TikTok. If they show up now, if they start showing up now on my for you page, I’ll obviously see them, but I couldn’t tell you one of these women’s TikToks, but yeah, you can fill me in on what kind of content they’re producing. Is it funny? Is it? Yeah. What is it?
But a few interesting things on the cast really, especially with Latia or yeah, Latia, as I would say so she gained a lot of followers and I was seeing everywhere, everywhere. Everybody’s saying she’s one of the most beautiful women on the cast. I think she, she, cause she’s not final. Are we talking spoilers?
We’re doing spoilers, right?
Yeah, we she’s the one that I said, she, she lasts far. Let’s just say she makes, she’s in the final four. I mean, I, that’s how actually that’s on my Instagram page. So if you don’t know by
now, she’s in the final
four and could be, and could be lasting even further than the final four, but let’s just call it.
Minimum final four for laia.
So we saw in the first 24 hours after the cast release, so I have a list of contestants each season that gained more than 20, more than a thousand followers after the cast release. And obviously it’s less these days than it used to be, but this season it was Alexi, which. I think also might be because she’s at the top of the list alphabetically.
And I was looking back season to season and typically the first one to two women on the list gain the most followers. Cause they’re the first on every article and on every post. And then it starts
with an a apply for the show. Cause you’re going to get a little bump
and then Carolina, she gained 1, 500.
Giuliana gained 1100 Lucia gained 1000, and ironically, Grant only gained 960 followers. And then, don’t worry, I have the data on the leads that we’re going to talk about too. So if we look back at other seasons, Jen this wasn’t 24 hours after this was actually, like, 2 weeks because I didn’t take data the next day.
I took a break after it, but we had the people with the most growth were Aaron herb, which everybody was freaking out about because of Noah and then we had Brett, which was a fan favorite Kevin McDevitt. Sam McKinney, who was a big fan favorite. And then the last one was Sam Nihad, but he, he was buying followers on and off all season or has trends that make me lead, lead me to think that he was buying followers.
Then we have Joey, which again, this was like a two week period after the announcement, we had Daisy with 8, 400 followers after the announcement. And then everyone else was around a thousand. So the, everyone else was Allison, Autumn, Carissa. Jen, Jessica, Kelsey, Lexi, Natalie, Sydney. They all gained between a thousand to like 1900.
Zach’s season, we had one contestant gain over a thousand followers. That was Christina Mandrell. Clayton, we had two. It was Lindsay Windham. Oh, oh, Little emojis on the screen here, Lindsay. And then Susie, I think it’s cause I’m using my, my iPhone for my camera. So it’s like doing things on the screen. So Clayton season, we have Lindsay Wyndham and then Susie who gained around a thousand Matt season.
We had a lot the one with the two with the most were Kit Keenan and Abigail who gained over a 2000. Everybody else was under that. With over a thousand. So it was Anna, Katie Thurston Chelsea, Maggie, MJ, and Rachel Greconel, and then Peter’s season, we had three or we had a number. So the one who gained the most afterwards was Hannah Ann, who gained 7, 300 in the first 24 hours.
And then Maddie Pruitt gained 6, 100. This was back in the days, pre pandemic Instagram followers, pre season, and their growth was like the biggest indicator of spoilers. It isn’t. It isn’t so much anymore. And then McKenna gained 3200. Sarah Coffin gained 2800, but she had trends of buying during her season.
Kelly Flanagan gained 2500 and then everybody else was 1000. So Aliyah, Katrina Payton, Victoria F and Victoria P. Colton had a bunch too, but the ones that are most interesting were Kalen with 3, 500, Cassie with 7, 900, Demi with 2, 100, Hannah G with 9, 200 and Hannah Brown with 2, 200. So those have been the trends in the past for the contestants right after the release.
I think one of the biggest things I took from that was when you were going over Matt James season. It’s really funny to think, and I think most people. I don’t know. I guess if you’re a diehard, you probably knew it off the top of your head, but it is so funny to think that Katie Thurston was on Matt James.
Like, that’s where we initially got Katie Thurston. I think a lot of people forget that. I mean, I probably, if you were to ask me before that, I’d be like, yeah, I know Katie was on Matt’s, but it’s just funny to think about because that seems, number one, it seems so far away. And we remember Katie for so much more than really Matt James season.
Cause she finished 11th. We know her as the bachelorette. We know her F boy Island. It’s just so many other things we know her for than that. You know, we know her more. We probably know her more for 12 days of messy than we do. The fact that she was on Matt James season.
She was really great at creating her own, her own persona too.
After that season, so many contestants stay so rooted and stuck in the personalities that they were given on their first season, even leads when they go into have their own season. Yeah, she did a really great job, especially cause she had such a strong entrance with the showing up with the vibrator on night one.
Well, she also, she
was, wasn’t
she
a pretty big presence on Tik TOK before that season? Cause I remember talking about her. I was like, This girl is like a I think I introduced her as she’s a tiktok influencer because she had a lot At least back then a lot of followers on tick tock for someone coming into the show.
If I’m not mistaken.
Yeah, it was under her event with Katie account and and also her season. Not only was her limo entrance used throughout a lot of the promos format season. But the cold open on the first episode was her walking out with a vibrator. So that was the first thing we saw in Matt’s season.
It wasn’t Matt. It was Katie.
All right. Speaking of leads, let’s go to Grant’s numbers. I’m just curious. I haven’t even looked at his numbers. Where are Grant’s numbers? I don’t know if you have them from the day. I’m sure you do. From the day he was announced back in August. I believe it was August.
13th or 17th versus where he’s at now and comparing him to other leads. I’m guessing he’s probably on the lower end.
Yeah. So before he was announced, he was announced it was at the men tell all or no, it was before the men tell all you said it was August.
It was right after his he, the night he got eliminated.
Yeah. Okay. So that was
episode six, just before hometowns.
Yeah. The date was, I sent you the date yesterday, so I’m scrolling back on our crap.
Yeah, no, it was just for hometowns. I remember now I haven’t pulled up here. I can confidently say he had grant, had the least amount of followers when he was chosen out of any lead.
So before he was eliminated and before he was announced, he had 7, 951 followers, less than 10 K.
Yeah. That’s
to give you an idea of people who had more followers than him at that point in the season. So 7900, we had Aaron Erb, Austin, Brett, who was eliminated night one, had more followers. Somebody who had about the same number of followers as Grant was Brian Otts.
I don’t even remember him. He’s, oh
by the way, Brian OTTs, he’s the one that took the video, the Instagram video of Devin on New Year’s Eve with the sign on during the bottle service. With that said, Jen, ain’t it? That was Brian T’s video. So just know that that’s Brian T’s trash Recogniz. Trash .
Yeah.
That’s who hangs out with Devin.
I, yeah, I said trash recognizes trash ’cause I remembered something about him, but I’m not gonna bring that up on here. Then we had obviously demonstrator who had more followers. We had, Jonathan had more followers.
August 13th was when Grant was announced.
It was the day after the elimination.
I can see it right in his data. Marcus had more followers. Sam McKinney had 33, 000 followers. We’re not gonna talk about Sam Neha because he has a ton of odd trends. Spencer Connolly had more followers. And Tomas had close to the same number of followers. So, those are all the contestants that had more followers than him when he was announced after he.
So the next day when he was announced, I think he was announced in the afternoon. So I take all my data at 8 PM Eastern ever since Matt James season, and then in Colton season, I took it. Between like within a two hour range of that. So 24 hours after Grant’s episode where he was eliminated, he was at 21, 000 followers.
And then a week later he was at 36, 000 followers. I
mean, look, it doesn’t mean you have to choose somebody, you know, people are going to be like, what does it matter about followers? It’s just the best choice, but it just goes to what we kind of talked about earlier and what you said earlier. It helps a lot.
To choose somebody who does have a following because it just gets more people with eyeballs choosing. I’m not saying grants a bad choice. I’m not saying the season’s going to suck. I’m just saying when you announce your bachelor and he’s got 9700 followers on Instagram. It’s just yes.
7,
7907, 000. It’s just, it’s, it’s not doing you any favors.
You’re, you’re literally like starting behind the eight ball when you do that, you know?
Well, the reason why they have followers and the reason why I track followers, right? Because I occasionally get the like rogue person who finds my page and posts. Why do followers even matter? Why does the growth even matter?
Their social media growth is a direct, it’s a metric. It’s the only metric out there that we can really quantify of how much does this person, how much is this person liked by the audience, you know, and it also is a big correlation of. The screen time versus social media growth. If they’re getting a lot of screen time and not gaining a lot of followers, it’s typically because they’re a villain, they’re not liked, or they’re a person of color or some combination of those.
And the issue here is that Grant, he was behind most of the cast and he’s already behind because he’s not white. So like it, he has a lot of factors already working against him. In addition to the fact that he didn’t get any screen time, they didn’t build him up, so the audience didn’t really care about him.
And it wasn’t because he’s not a great person. Like, it had nothing to do with his personality, which I have thoughts on, you know, some of the things that he’s, he’s said in the past, but, you know, they just didn’t build him up. So he’s, you can do that with white contestants, but you can’t do that. with non white contestants with this franchise, unfortunately.
No, it does. It’s just, it all goes back to what we first talked about when it comes to this. If you want to cast your Bachelor who’s got 7, 000 followers, that’s fine. But then you gotta promote the shit out of him. And you gotta have him everywhere. And the way they did it that night, right after he gets eliminated from GenSeason, it goes on the Bachelor Instagram page.
And that’s it. He’s not on GMA. He’s not on Kimmel. It was such a low key announcement.
Or connected to a really powerful storyline. So we have a lot of examples of that. I have this data by the way, on how many followers each lead had when their cast was announced. But think about like Jen going on dancing with the stars.
She went in with a really powerful storyline. was partnered with Sasha, who is a arguably attractive single pro on Dancing with the Stars, and they built up that storyline. Whether or not they’re actually together, I hope she’s having a great time. I wish the best for her after she was royally effed over by this franchise.
But also think Matt James, right? Matt James is the best example of how to do this show right with casting. He didn’t have a season before going on the show. On the flip side, He was chosen when he was pulled out from Claire’s season, and then Claire kind of tried to F him over. Before that with what he was doing on social media with Tyler Cameron.
But Matt James went in as the first black bachelor, but he already had a big following in, in a buy-in because he was best friends with Tyler Cameron, who is to this day the most successful male. from this franchise on So was obsessed with Tyler C and Matt James was his be loved him. All right. And is a greek god.
I got to with the stars this last and tell you, like, I alr attractive online, but wh in real life, you’re like God has favorites, unfortunately, like it’s truly unreal in real life that like, you know, the storyline attractive, but he’s also a person of color, which is working against him, but they did that right with the storyline and with pushing the, you know, all the advertising around the show and his narrative, like, they did it really well.
They’re really failing grant right now. But as far as social media followers on the day that casts were announced, officially, we’ve got the cast photos. Grant had 84, 000. Jen had 81, 800 or sorry. I’m tired. Y’all 185, 000. Joey had 173, 000. So Joey had less followers when his cast was announced than Jen, which I think is, is very interesting.
Zach was the one with the lowest following. Zach had 65, 000. Clayton had about 110, 000. Matt James had 473, 000 followers. Peter had 1. 3 million and Colton had 883, 000.
So what’d you say, Matt? What’d you say a grant is at right now or when it was, so the lowest, I guess, is Zach in the history of the announcement being made is Zach.
And he had 65,
which also made sense with Zach. He came off of a season where there were two leads. Final seven, not final four. Like we typically do very little screen time, very little buy in and people really didn’t want him. They didn’t find him the most attractive guy in the cast. He ended up being great lead and they’re still together and he’s a really great guy, but you know, he had a lot of factors working against him.
You mentioned Jen and all that. And I’m curious, I’m sure you have the numbers here in regards to Jen, start of bachelorette to end of bachelorette, start of dance with the stars to end of dance with the stars. I’m wondering which got her more of. A bump in her followers. I’m guessing it’s Bachelorette just cause she was on it longer.
She was involved in it.
Yeah. So I’m going to break it down into three sections, actually episode one of bachelorette to the day of the finale. So before we saw the shit show, that was the finale and then finale to post finale growth. So, like, about 5 days after and then dancing with the stars, episode 1 episode 2.
So 3 sections in there. Okay.
Yeah.
From episode 1 to her to the morning. To the evening of her finale, just before it aired, she gained 81, 000 followers on Instagram. I’m guessing
most of those were probably Finale night, probably more than half of those 80, 000 were.
No, this was just before the premiere started to air.
So literally 5 minutes before on each episode.
Okay, so first episode to the finale night, once the finale was done airing, right? You said 85, 000 she gained?
Just before the finale aired, 5 minutes before the finale aired. Between episode 1 and 5 minutes before the finale.
5 finale aired, got it, okay.
She gained.
It was about 82, 000 followers. 82,
000. Okay.
Now, from the night of the finale, five minutes before, until five days post finale, okay, she gained 147, 000, or 148, 000 followers.
Yeah, so over a course of basically eight weeks, she gained 85, 000, and in five days, she gained that one hundred and, what’d you say, 40?
Yeah.
148, 000. 148, 000.
Yeah. And that’s a huge bump, because she was named, or she was, because of, one, the story with Devin, she was a, now a sympathetic figure, and then two, we find out she’s going on Dance with the Stars during those five days. And then, what are the Dance with the Stars numbers?
So from episode one of Dancing with the Stars until the finale, she gained 106, 000 followers on Instagram.
Now, what I find very interesting is the TikTok data because she is a very active TikTok content creator. And so much of the success of Dancing with the Stars this season had to do with TikTok. And most of the buzz around Jen came from TikTok. So if you’re a person listening that does not use TikTok, you probably don’t know that there were like Constant videos being made around is Sasha and Jen a couple?
Are they not blah, blah, blah. Everybody was watching her day with her lives, seeing that on the corner of the video, she had her hand in his lap in the car, like stuff like that. So during from episode one to five minutes before the finale on Tik TOK for bachelorette. So when Jen was on the bachelorette as the lead, she only gained, well, only it was a great number.
She gained 38, 37, 000 followers on Tik TOK. During her season of the bachelorette on dancing with the stars from episode one to the finale. She gained 182, 000 followers on tick tock. And so many of her videos were going viral on tick tock. It’s this balance, right? It’s, it’s a balance in terms of like success with like.
How much you can charge companies and everything with social media and ads and stuff like that. It’s a balance between how many followers you have, but also how many of your videos go viral. And that’s also starting to bleed into Instagram, but TikTok with the algorithm and how that app works, it’s more about both.
Is there a number that’s considered going viral? Is it a million? Is it 500, 000? Is it more about engagement? What is, I mean, I know what videos are viral, but I, I, Is there a minimum number where you can say, okay, that’s, I would consider that a viral video, whether it’s Instagram or TikTok, 500, 000 million.
It depends on who you’re talking to. So if you’re talking to just general people who use TikTok, I think the general consensus would be over a million, a million views. But when it comes to the advertising world, that, that term is used more loosely compared to how many followers they have, right? So if you’re a micro content creator, where you have like, you know, under 10, 000 followers, But most of your videos are getting like 100, 000 to 500, 000 views, like often that you, you have a lot of content doing really well and being, you know, it’s, it’s successful content.
You want to. So that’s 1 of the things like I looking at the women on this season of, of grant season and looking at their tech talks, a number of them have like. 10, 20, 000 followers. When I went to go look at their page and I sorted their videos, they just had like two videos back in 2020 go viral and everything else since then has been under a thousand views.
So, like, you know, it’s it’s all about how many followers you have all of your videos. How often are they going viral? How many videos are you making? How much engagement to those videos make, but that’s more the advertising side of things and marketing and partnering with those influencers. Some people don’t care about that.
Like me, I don’t do any ads on my page. So. I don’t care about my content going viral. I care about giving good content to my audience and trying to do it as ethically as I possibly can. So yeah, it’s, it depends on each content creator and their audience size in short.
Well, you mentioned grants, women and Tik TOK and one name that you brought up from earlier.
I think she has the most. On tiktok, Alicia, you said, and you wanted to say that you have some thoughts on her tiktok content. I haven’t looked at any of her stuff. So what is Alicia’s deal on tiktok?
Okay. So I have found now 17 women’s tiktoks. So doing really well. They’re much harder to find than Instagram, unfortunately, but We don’t have any content creators like Daisy last season.
And I have my personal thoughts on Daisy, but when it comes to the show, Daisy was a big reason why the show was successful with her daily content. And she had been making daily content for like a year or two before she went on the show. So by the time the show started to air, she knew a really good formula that was working with her content creation and had a really good story as well.
But talking about the accounts, so we have Alicia. She’s the one that was Miss California 2020. She has, I’m trying to pull it up here right now. So sorry. I thought I had all of this ready.
I think you had it.
Yeah. 24, 000 followers. There she is. So she, she had a few virals that blew up back in 2020 and she really hasn’t had much else since then. I looked at her page. She has like a couple hundred views per video. Alexi, I think is one of the ones that I’m more excited for. She’s Posted a lot already and it’s doing fairly well for the content that she makes.
We have Bailey who she’s one of our people of color contestants. I highlight that because number one, she’s a social media manager. That’s her job title. It’s also in her bio on Instagram. So she knows how to make content and how to manage it for other people. She’s had a lot of content do well on Tik TOK, but because she’s a person of color just across Tik TOK in general, it doesn’t matter.
Reality TV, non reality TV, non reality TV. If you are a woman of color, you’re gonna have to work 10 times as hard as a white content creator to gain followers. So her follower count right now is at 17, 000, but I was looking at her content. It’s really good. It’s really well edited and the engagement rates are looking really good for it.
Next we have Chloe. So she’s posted just a few videos and also she doesn’t have a large Instagram following. So she’s a model and people might remember she’s like slightly ginger, but more on the blonde side of things. And turns out, so her bio says that she’s a curve model. So it seems like she’s going to be leaning based on her bio.
It seems like she’s going to be leaning into that content. So Which has the potential to create a really powerful community. I follow a few different curve models. It’s been really great for my mental health. Just with some personal struggles that I have, and I’m really excited to see her content. And if she’s going to start to post more, she’s also stunning.
Then we have Christina. So Christina is going to regret her username. She wrote, it’s Christina Kelly, but with three L’s for Kelly, and people aren’t going to be able to find her, but very interesting. I think she’s the villain this season. And I want to know if I’m right or wrong, or have you shared who the villain is yet?
Yes or no? Okay. I don’t know who it is, but she makes motivational content that kind where it’s like either a video of you like sitting on a bus staring out the window with text over you or photos with like text about it. So here have been her content. Her her content that’s blown up has been like 1, whatever videos was on.
She has like a toxic. The title said toxic mom and it was all about going like, no contact with your mother. And it had 4M views. But again, like, on the motivational side of things, her 2nd, most viral video. Was posted May of 2023. So this was before she went on the show and the text over, it was like her sitting like on a bus or something like that, or like a train, it said, it basically said she doesn’t care if she’s the villain in somebody’s story.
I’m a good person with a good heart. If I’m your villain, you probably deserved that shit. So she’s had four viral videos and she has like 12, 000 followers. So that’s kind of the content that seems like we’ll get from her on there.
Do you want an answer to your question?
Yes. Is she the villain?
She’s irrelevant to this season.
She’s gone night one.
Interesting! I feel like they cast her because they went to go look at her page and they were like, Oh, this girl’s gonna be happy to be our villain.
Yeah, she’s she’s gone night one. I don’t even know if she has any drama on night one. But I know she’s gone night one.
I’ve gotten some DMS from people who aren’t happy about some of her content on Instagram of her posting her getting cornrows for context of people that know who she is and what she looks like.
She’s white blonde. So, that’s just some stuff I’ve gotten about her, but I guess she doesn’t make it far. So it doesn’t matter. One that I find interesting is Radhika. I think it’s her name. So she has two accounts. One is her personal account. And the other one is with her sister. The account name is called sisters period in underscore law.
And then in the bio basically says something like Esquire. So it seems like they’re both lawyers, but it’s a brand new account and they only have two videos with five followers and all the two videos that they’ve posted. It’s basically sisters just dissing on each other. It has nothing to do with law.
So I might be wrong. It seems like they’re going to try to create content around that. Does she make it far or is she relevant this season?
No, she’s gone first night, I believe. Maybe it’s either first or maybe second episode. I’m, I don’t have my notes in front of me, but she’s not a name that put it this way.
She doesn’t make travel, you know, travel starts episode four, they do three episodes in LA and they’re down to 10 women by episode four. So
what about Alexi?
Yeah. She’s a first impression Rose.
Oh, great. Cause she makes a lot of really good content. I’m, I’m like trying to look through these contestants and Bailey too.
Does she, is she relevant this season? I’m so sorry. You can also tell me this offline if you prefer.
No, no, this stuff is out there, or at least I’ve talked about it. Alexi Alexi. Yeah. What they did was for this season, I don’t even want to call it a twist. It’s just whoever, I guess it was announced to the women, the first night in the mansion, whoever gets the first impression rose.
Also gets the first one on one of the season. So Alexi gets both. It’s not because he chose to also give it to her. It was, it was known that if you get the first impression Rose, you’re getting the first one on one of the season. So I
really like that. I love that because so far, especially in the, I I’m glad that they.
I wonder if they were looking at my data. I don’t, well, I know the producers do cause they’ll follow me, but the data for the bachelor specifically, not the bachelorette, the women who get the first impression rose rarely make it to hometowns. They all get eliminated. Like we, the week before hometowns or the week just before, like, you remember Abigail storyline,
we keep that streak alive this season.
Yeah,
yeah,
no, that’s it. No, it just, it just, Kept with what’s happened in the past. It’s it, it doesn’t change. I don’t know, you know, what happens to her in terms of later on. What is, what’s, did he sour on her? Did something happen? I don’t know. But we know that she’s not in the final four. So, but yeah, she does get the first impression rose and the first date of the season.
But
I think the other piece of data that I was thinking about was how they also just never ended up getting a one on one date. Like they get eliminated and they never get a one on one date.
Yeah, it happens a lot for sure. Yeah. Happens a lot for sure. Olivia Caridi being prime example that pops into my head.
You know, she got stuck on a two on one date and they got left on an Island on Ben’s season and Abigail never got a one on one. There was definitely others. But yeah, it’s always been, that’s been like the curse out. I think Hannah and. On Peter season was the only one. And now can we even consider her a winner?
I believe she’s the only person if I’m not mistaken. I think Hannah Ann’s the only person who ever got the first impression rose that ended up quote unquote winning on the bachelor. And then the bachelorette is the complete opposite. If you get the first impression rose, it was like five out of seven years.
That person ended up being the winner and shows it showed that the women who are bachelorette had a better intuition on night one than the men do. But yeah. It’s just kind of weird how that’s worked out. It’s not like, like you said, they usually don’t even get to the final four first impression rows for the men.
And yet for the women, not only do they get far, they usually end up winning. So,
yeah.
Yeah, it feels like
they tried to change the format to try to make it better.
Yeah. It’s like, okay, we’ll give her the first date. And then, you know, like I said, I don’t know how Lexi’s journey goes. I just know where she finishes and it’s not in the final four.
So,
yeah, if I could put out a plea to like people who watch this show is like. Don’t, don’t come after contestants for trying to make content on Tik Tok. Like stop harping on them because we need it. We like people know this. If they’ve been following me for a while, I had my pop culture data account.
There’s no show that I have loved as much for as long as the bachelor and dancing with the stars. Like those have been my favorite shows of all time consistently. And we want this show to stay alive. And like, they’ve been trying to make a lot of changes, especially if you’ve been here with the bachelor diversity campaign, We can see that they’re trying to make changes and they’re giving more, more screen time to people of color.
And they’re now starting to cast some body diversity and like, they’re trying to make these changes. So like we got, we got to, got to help the show guys stop harping on them. I’m trying to make TikTok content. And also Also on that topic, I’m surprised that Disney is not like, lobbying at Mar a Lago with like, Meta and Mark Zuckerberg to try to stop this TikTok ban, because the whole reason Dancing with the Stars has gotten successful is because of TikTok, is because of Riley.
That is the sole reason that the show started to take off again. And same thing with The Bachelor, with Joey Season, it’s TikTok. Like, we need this app to stay alive for these TV shows because there’s no, nothing goes viral on Instagram anymore. Like, the algorithm sucks there. And it’s about to become a 10 times more toxic environment.
Now that Meta has announced that they’re going to cut back. On missive point misinformation down, pulling down harmful content, pulling down things that violate their content policies. Like I, every single death threat that I’ve gotten in my DMS, which I don’t talk about this often. I don’t want to feel that side of things, but like every single death threat I’ve gotten DMS with like my luckily my old addresses, my family’s old addresses, because I’m smart about what I do online.
All of those DMs that I’ve reported have all come back as like, this doesn’t violate our community guidelines. So the fact that it’s about to get 10 times more toxic, like it’s not going to help the show go viral. Like it’s, I’m really interested to see what’s going to happen to this franchise, especially with Bachelor in Paradise this summer without TikTok, that show’s not going to be successful because they’re going to have contestants on the show that already have a large following on TikTok.
So we need that to watch the show for people to remember to tune in to care about the show.
Well, you know we talk about that and we talk about the things the show needs to do to get better and then we find out grant season isn’t starting until january 27th, and they’re already at hometowns by episode six So this is the shortest season in God knows how long we’re looking at nine episodes.
I mean, he has hometowns, you know, they were in LA for episode for three episodes, then they go overseas for two, and then they’re at hometowns in episode six. So if you just take the natural progression of the show, if you have hometowns in episode six, that means in episode seven, you’re going to be down to three women.
And then in episode eight. Which would essentially be your over your women tell all. And then episode nine, you’re down to your two. So it looks like we’re getting nine episodes this season, which is the lowest they’ve ever had. Probably since the early, early days of the show, like early to wait, how
many, how many episodes are going to be pre hometowns?
Cause I have data on that pulled up right in front of me.
Five.
Okay. So charity season, seven charity season had five episodes pre hometowns. Okay. So that was, that’s bachelorette.
Yeah, that’s bachelorette. We’ve never, bachelor five.
Yeah, as far as Bachelor, it’s all been seven or eight going back to Brad Womack’s second season.
The last time we had five pre Hometown episodes was Jake Pavelka’s season. Yeah,
I consider Brad 2. 0 is the start of where any data from the show should, should begin because pre that just wasn’t, it was a popular show. It was, it was, yeah, it was a popular show and there was obviously less television, no streaming back then, so the numbers were probably better ratings wise, but for the fan base.
I say it started it reignited on Brad Womack 2. 0 because we got an ending that we had never seen before where the guy at the end just said, yeah, I’m not choosing either of you and that 2. 0 2. 0 2. 0 is obviously Emily. So, yeah, so and after Brad 2. 0 was the next season was Jason, right?
No, so it went Jason, Jake, and then Brad 2.
0, but, but it was around
1. 0. Okay.
It was Brad 2. 0 that we started to see the version of the show that we see now. So like the number of weeks that they date, the number of weeks pre hometowns, the hometowns followed by overnights, but yeah, all that.
Gotcha. Yeah, no, that makes sense. I I’ve always said Jason.
Was the season that put the show back on the map. They had a bunch of lulls before that, but format wise. Yeah. Brad 2. 0 makes sense. But yeah, it was
a mess. And then Brad was awesome. And then flash next season was a mess. Glorious. And
