Nearly 20,000 fans of the popular reality competition series are unhappy with the new format.
Bernardo SimFans of RuPaul’s Drag Race have had it… officially!
After years of VH1 airing a two-hour block of Drag Race content that included 90-minute standard episodes plus half-hour Untucked segments, the move to MTV has come with a change in the programming in order to launch a brand-new series for the network. New episodes of Drag Race season 15 will air for one hour (not 90 minutes), which will be followed by The Real Friends of WeHo, which will then be followed by Untucked.
Diehard Drag Race fans are absolutely not pleased with these shorter Drag Race episodes, claiming that queens have worked too hard to settle for so much less airtime. Viewers are also complaining that they’d have to watch (or wait) for The Real Friends of WeHo to conclude in order to watch Untucked live on TV.
A Change.org petition has been created by fans with the title, “Bring back 90-minute episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race and not air The Real Friends of WeHo.” As of this writing, the petition is very close to gathering 20,000 signatures and moving at a quick pace.
This Change.org petition for the length of Drag Race episodes reads:
“I know this is probably petty, but MTV and WOW Presents, we would like RuPaul’s Drag Race to return to 90-minute episodes. The 90-minute format was unique to any other reality competition show where we actually have context for the content of episodes. Also, we really don’t want The Real Friends of WeHo to air. Given Todrick Hall’s problematic behavior last year on Celebrity Big Brother, it’s irresponsible to give him a platform he doesn’t deserve, and he refuses to take accountability. So we ask politely and aggressively to allow Drag Race to have the 90 minutes fans deserve.
VH1 started to air 90-minute episodes of Drag Race during season 10. Though the episodes themselves were one hour long, they aired as 90 minutes of content when including the commercial breaks.
With the move to MTV for Drag Race season 15, though, episodes have reverted back to being a round one-hour block of television. This means that episodes are about 40 minutes long, plus commercial breaks.
For one, it is likely that the entire 15th season of Drag Racehas already been fully edited to fit the one-hour block of programming, so this petition might be a little too late. Secondly, it is very unlikely that MTV will change its programming strategy based on a petition of this kind. Last but not least, the one-hour block of Drag Race will probably hit its sweet spot once this cast of 16 queens is narrowed down to just a few. It seems like a lot of this frustration comes from having such a large cast with less time to showcase them all individually – but the cast will keep getting smaller week by week.
We shall see how this turns out!
RuPaul’s Drag Race season 15 airs Fridays on MTV.
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0'Drag Race' Fans Are Petitioning to Bring Back 90-Minute Episodes
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