‘Welcome to Myrtle Manor’ ratings down in third season

Official viewership numbers were down for the third season of “Trailer Park: Welcome to Myrtle Manor” but cast member and park owner Cecil Patrick said that doesn’t worry him about the possibility of getting picked up for a fourth season.

“I am cautiously optimistic,” Patrick said.

The 10-episode third season averaged about 644,000 viewers per show, according to Nielsen, with the two-episode finale – which aired last Thursday – getting 528,000 viewers at 9 p.m. and 629,000 at 10 p.m. The show usually aired Thursdays at 10 p.m.

“I have not heard anybody disappointed in the numbers at all,” Patrick said.

The show averaged 1.1 million viewers in the first two seasons, according to Nielsen, which measures the ratings of television shows.

Patrick, who owns Patrick’s Mobile Home Park off Highway 15 in Myrtle Beach where the TLC show is filmed, said it’s become common practice in the television industry to take social media and other non-traditional methods of measuring viewership into account.

“Our numbers, from what I understand, are greater [than last year] between everything they use to measure now,” Patrick said.

Shannon Llanes with TLC said a decision had not yet been made on a fourth season of the show and there was no timetable for when a decision would be made.

Patrick said he feels as though the show’s popularity has grown each season, pointing to the number of people who visit the park each day.

“On Sunday, two families from Australia came to see Myrtle Manor – that’s the only reason they were in South Carolina,” he said. “We had a guy from Bangladesh here last week. I asked him how he even heard of Myrtle Manor. He said, ‘YouTube.’ It’s just amazing.”

This story was originally published April 30, 2015 at 8:46 AM with the headline "‘Welcome to Myrtle Manor’ ratings down in third season."