Producer Evan Husney Isn’t Sure How Vice Determines If Dark Side of the Ring Is Successful Enough For Renewal

In an interview with Fightful, Dark Side of the Ring producer Evan Husney said he’s not sure what metric Vice uses to determine if his show is a success. The show continues to get renewed and the sixth season premiered last night. Here are highlights:

On Vice continuing to renew the show: “To be honest, I don’t know their specific metric for success, like what they need to hit in order to do it. I think with the television audiences declining on cable, I think that that scale is always sliding because of where things are at. But like you said, this show, it isn’t always about the overnight live ratings. There’s a lot of competition out on cable and we do have a loyal fan base we’ve built up over six seasons that have selected Dark Side on their DVRs and they’re going to hit it when they hit it and stuff like that, which is great. Obviously, I’m sure the network would prefer everybody watching it live for obvious reasons. We have built that up and then, of course, it gets on Hulu and then, of course, it’s sold and distributed in other places as well. So yeah, I think for them, whatever their metrics for are for success, it thankfully—knock on wood—keeps hitting that. For us, it’s more paying attention to how it’s perceived. We want people to like the shows. We’ve done 60 of them now. It’s kind of crazy to think that that many stories could withstand what this, I guess, what you classify as a Dark Side Of episode, and that’s why we’ve kind of opened it up a little bit, too. John Tenta is not an episode everyone would have thought would be a thematic fit for our show, right?”

On the success of the show: “Yeah, that’s right. So I think, you know, there was a lot of people watching and the Owen Hart episode did record numbers. I think that’s still the highest-rated show that VICE has had. I think it’s like we’ve built that following over the course of those seasons, but it is interesting and there’s no real secret to what episode is going to rate better than the other one. I think it’s just the factors of what people are doing. What’s on TV that night? What are people doing? It’s random. Because I’ve seen an episode like Chris Colt, I’ve seen an episode that is the deepest cut guy or wrestler or person personality and rates higher than someone that everybody knows. Or I would have thought the Marty Janetty episode would have everyone would have ran, canceled all their plans for that night to watch that, but they didn’t. They all did something else, which, OK, fine, whatever. I get it. But it’s hard to predict what episode is going to outperform the other. There’s no real metric to it that I can see anyway. Besides, they’re very obvious like Owen and Benoit, that there’s a lot of interest in. Of course, those do well, but the other ones, it’s a crap shoot.”