By Wade Paulsen, 11/14/2003

Mediaweek.com reports that the new approach toward the reality sequelThe Next Joe Millionaire adopted by Fox -- airing episodes back-to-back on Monday nights -- didn't change the show's continuing record of Nielsen ratings failures.

The "two-pack" of JoeM2 episodes placed fifth in the ratings among the six major networks for the night. The combined episodes only managed to record a 4.4 rating / 6 share, which means that just 6% of the people with their TVs turned on were watching Fox's pre-Thanksgiving turkey. For the night, Fox finished behind CBS, ABC, NBC and The WB, beating out only UPN's comedy block.

By contrast to JoeM2's dismal ratings, NBC's two reality offerings fared much better. Fear Factor recorded an 8.1/12 from 8-9 PM and won the night among adults 18-49. And even Average Joe managed an average 7.3/ 11.

The dismal failure of his show, coupled with the disastrous ratings for Temptation Island 3 over the summer leads us to wonder if we aren't witnessing the end of Rocket Science Laboratories, which produced both shows. Too bad they didn't take our advice and not go to the well one last time.