A Big Change Is Coming for the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show
The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, a long-reigning main event of December, is about to undergo a big change. Per The New York Times, the show, which has aired on either ABC or CBS since 2001, will no longer be shown on network TV.
The reason? People just aren't watching like they used to. Per the Times, the show's viewership has dropped about two-thirds within five years. Last year, the show dropped to 3.3 million viewers from 9.7 million viewers in 2013.
Though the show has been suffering from a drop in viewership in recent years, 2018 brought fresh controversy. Ed Razek, chief marketing officer of Victoria's Secret's parenting company, made comments in a Vogue interview in early November of last year that raised some serious eyebrows among fans of the production. The show featured Adriana Lima, Stella Maxwell, and Martha Hunt among others.
"So it's like, why don’t you do 50?" Mr. Razek said in the interview, referring to the sizes of models. "Why don't you do 60? Why don't you do 24? It's like, why doesn't your show do this? Shouldn’t you have transsexuals in the show? No. No, I don't think we should. Well, why not? Because the show is a fantasy. It’s a 42-minute entertainment special."
Per the Times, Leslie Wexner, the chief executive of L Brands, said in a statement Friday that he and his colleagues are "taking a fresh look at every aspect of our business" ahead of this year's show. He said the brand "must evolve and change to grow."
He went on: "With that in mind, we have decided to re-think the traditional Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show," he wrote. "Going forward we don’t believe network television is the right fit."
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