Business

‘Curse of Oak Island’ Draws Millions Of Viewers To History Channel

December 8, 2023

Topline

The return of History Channel’s treasure-hunting reality show “Curse of Oak Island” for an 11th season has viewers flocking to the network in numbers that rival the most popular cable news programs and Hallmark’s slate of holiday movies, the latest in a line of successes for a show that has sparked nearly a dozen spinoffs, books and video games.

“The Curse of Oak Island” airs on the History Channel.

History.com

Key Facts

The season premiere of “Curse of Oak Island” on Nov. 7 was watched by 2 million people on cable news, and the audience has only grown since, Nielsen data shows.

The 11th season’s third episode, which aired Nov. 21, was the most-watched of the season so far and broke into the top 10 most-watched cable programs of the week with 2.4 million viewers, making it the most popular cable show on television for the day by a margin of almost 400,000 people—the only cable shows that out-rated it the week of Nov. 20 were Fox News programs, NFL and college football games and a Hallmark holiday movie.

So far this season, episodes have out-rated programs like the Ole Miss v. Mississippi college football game, the Celtics v. Bucks NBA matchup and the return of Randy Orton to “WWE Raw” on USA Network.

The return of “Curse of Oak Island” pulled the History Channel from the 18th most-watched cable network in total day viewers to the eighth—the most recent Nielsen data shows an average of 328,000 viewers for History last week, up from 249,000 in the week before the 11th season premiere.

In the week of Nov. 27 to Dec. 3, the most recent Nielsen data available, the show was the 13th most-watched on cable with 2.3 million viewers—the only programs that out-rated “Oak Island” were Fox News shows and “Monday Night Football” on ESPN.

Parrot Analytics, a content analytics company, said audience demand for “The Curse of Oak Island” — determined by the amount of streams, downloads, audience activity on social media and online searches — was 12.8 times higher than the audience demand for the average American show this fall, a level seen by only 2.7% of all TV shows.

The show’s popularity isn’t new—a previous season finale in 2017 drew 3.8 million viewers, and the series has inspired three spin-off shows, a series of deep-dive episodes, a puzzle game in development from Visionaire Studio.

Big Number

11%. Audience demand for “The Curse of Oak Island” increased by 11% during October, according to Parrot Analytics, ahead of the premiere of season 11.

Key Background

“The Curse of Oak Island” first premiered in 2014 and follows a team of hunters led by brothers Marty and Rick Lagina in pursuit of a centuries-old treasure on Oak Island in Nova Scotia. Legend has told of priceless cultural treasures like the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant being buried on the island, though no significant treasure has ever been found. Early explorers first sought the secrets of the island centuries ago, and lore surrounding the “money pit“—a man-made shaft said to have been re-discovered by teenagers in the late 1700s—is the focus of much modern-day exploration. The shaft’s exact location has been obscured by hundreds of years of expedition and natural changes, but the Lagina brothers have focused much of their excavating efforts on finding it, though they’ve been stymied by apparent booby traps and centuries-old attempts to prevent discovery. Theories on whose treasure is stashed away on the island range from the pirate Blackbeard to Templars, Masons, Incas and Revolutionary War soldiers. The long hunt for treasure on Oak Island is also the topic of a book by journalist and author Randall Sullivan.