Flavor of Love Tops the Charts

VH1's Flavor of Love 2 finale yielded ratings as gold as the grille of its star, Flavor Flav. The 90-minute episode at 10 p.m. Oct. 15 posted VH1's biggest audience ever, drawing a 7.52 million total viewers, and ranked as the top show of the night and the highest rated non-sports telecast in basic cable for the year in the 18-49 demo with a 4.6 rating, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Flavor's second season finale more than doubled its season premiere, which averaged 3.3 million total viewers Aug. 6 and ranked as the most watched season premiere in the network's history.

And now VH1's spreading the Love to iTunes, offering both seasons one and two for the first time through the iTunes Music Store for $1.99 an episode. The show has proven a hit for VH1 on its own broadband site, VSPOT, posting a new daily record for a single show with 1.1 million streams Oct. 16. Starting today, VH1 is also now selling episodes fellow "celebreality" series Hogan Knows Best, Breaking Bonaduce and Strange Love on iTunes.

Flavor helped VH1 average nearly double its third quarter audience, with an average 1.22 million total viewers in prime for the week ending Oct. 15. The week's most viewed basic cable networks were ESPN with 3.15 million total viewers in prime, non-ad-supported Disney with 2.88 million, USA with 2.44 million and TNT with 2.02 mil