90 DAY FIANCé
The Sexiest Empire on Cable TV
Every Fall and Winter– without fail– our Facebook feeds fill up with engagement photos and ‘save the date’ announcements. Your’ bride to be’ friends are obsessed with every detail of their upcoming nuptials in the months following. Sit-down dinner or buffet? DJ or band? Who will be the maid of honor? It’s a multi-million dollar global phenomenon, and getting it just right is time-consuming. Brides magazine tells us that the average engagement in the United States lasts about 18 months. For some couples, though, things are a little different.
If an American citizen is engaged to someone from a foreign country, the rules change dramatically. If the couple plans to live in the U.S, they have to apply for a K-1 Visa, which can be costly and highly invasive. Once that person steps foot on American soil– if approved– they have 90 days to tie the knot, or it’s time to pack bags for a return flight home. The stress and time constraints make for excellent TV, and six years ago, Howard Lee, President of TLC, thought so too.
The original show, 90 Day Fiance– which aired in January of 2014– followed four couples’ journeys. Each had less than three months to plan a wedding and get married, all while trying to get to know one another, achieve family acceptance, and navigate complicated cultural differences. With intriguing couples like Russ & Paola and Alan & Kirlyam, TLC viewers were obsessed. The show’s success launched an empire, yielding ten additional spinoffs, each adding millions of viewers. Shows like Happily Ever After, 90 Day the Other Way, and Pillow Talk each average about 4 million viewers— and the numbers are growing.
According to Discovery, in 2020, TLC “ranks #1 in primetime for women in all ad-supported cable.” Howard Lee– who brought smash hits Say Yes to The Dress and Cake Boss to the network– calls the 90 Day Fiancé franchise TLC’s “version of a Marvel Comics Universe.” He credits the success to excellent casting and the social media boom.
Lee told Vulture, “We did not go for run-of-the-mill casting. [Couples] had to be brutally honest and transparent, able to express their feelings.” Of cast members, he also said, “The other part of this, why it started to pick up, I think is the audience didn’t know whether or not both sides of a couple had the best interests of the other person in mind. These couples just want to really believe that love is true and love is forever, yet everything around us is always preventing that from happening.” Since the show began, the franchise has produced some pretty hot reality TV celebrities. Cast members, Jeniffer Tarazona, Paola Mayfield, Kirlyam Cox, and Deavan Clegg, have all launched impressive modeling careers. Darcey Silva– a three-season veteran with 1 million Instagram followers– now has her spinoff show with her twin sister, Darcey & Stacey.
In 2014, when 90 Day Fiancé first hit airwaves, the show had one million same-day viewers, and now the original season has a robust two million. Lee credits this unprecedented growth to cliffhangers and the purposeful interactive show design. He said, “When you go on social media, everybody is in for a viewing party… I think it is a social water cooler… And the fact that we ended every episode on cliffhangers, with undivulged secrets, also made it a must-see, to come back the following week.”
So if you are a 90 Day newbie, start streaming. You won’t be disappointed!
