Category
Applied
Description
Broadcast television ratings are declining due to the popularity of streaming platforms (Attest Media, 2024; Bauder, 2025). Shows must adapt to survive in this increasingly digital environment. In 2025, Bachelor in Paradise (Teti, 2025) hired a new showrunner, Scott Teti, who adjusted the show’s format, structure, location, cinematography, and editing with the hope of boosting viewer engagement (Franklin, 2025). This study applied Stuart Hall’s (1973, 1980, 2021) encoding/decoding model to analyze audience Instagram comments in response to Teti’s premiere episode of Bachelor in Paradise. This study explored how audiences decoded and responded to these changes, and whether social media commentary aligned with or diverged from viewership trends. Audience responses were skewed oppositional, particularly in reaction to the new season’s premiere. Some viewers expressed negotiated positions, holding out hope that the season might improve, while a smaller portion offered preferred readings aligning with the show’s new direction. Findings suggest that social media commentary offers a form of real-time audience feedback that complements traditional ratings by revealing how viewers interpret and evaluate media content. From a theoretical perspective, the study extends Hall’s model to the context of reality television and participatory media by highlighting the renewed relevance of reproduction, through which audiences reshape meanings and return them to producers within contemporary media ecosystems. Keywords: reception theory, encoding/decoding, dominant, negotiated, oppositional, critical, referential, Bachelor in Paradise, Instagram, audience sentiment.
Paradise Reimagined: A Reception Theory Analysis of Viewer Responses to Bachelor in Paradise’s New Era
Applied
Broadcast television ratings are declining due to the popularity of streaming platforms (Attest Media, 2024; Bauder, 2025). Shows must adapt to survive in this increasingly digital environment. In 2025, Bachelor in Paradise (Teti, 2025) hired a new showrunner, Scott Teti, who adjusted the show’s format, structure, location, cinematography, and editing with the hope of boosting viewer engagement (Franklin, 2025). This study applied Stuart Hall’s (1973, 1980, 2021) encoding/decoding model to analyze audience Instagram comments in response to Teti’s premiere episode of Bachelor in Paradise. This study explored how audiences decoded and responded to these changes, and whether social media commentary aligned with or diverged from viewership trends. Audience responses were skewed oppositional, particularly in reaction to the new season’s premiere. Some viewers expressed negotiated positions, holding out hope that the season might improve, while a smaller portion offered preferred readings aligning with the show’s new direction. Findings suggest that social media commentary offers a form of real-time audience feedback that complements traditional ratings by revealing how viewers interpret and evaluate media content. From a theoretical perspective, the study extends Hall’s model to the context of reality television and participatory media by highlighting the renewed relevance of reproduction, through which audiences reshape meanings and return them to producers within contemporary media ecosystems. Keywords: reception theory, encoding/decoding, dominant, negotiated, oppositional, critical, referential, Bachelor in Paradise, Instagram, audience sentiment.
