A&E Picks Up Family Jewels For Third Season

A&E has picked up a third season of Gene Simmons: Family Jewels, upping its order to 24 half-hours from last season’s 20. The decision was an easy one: Jewels is A&E’s second highest rated series ever in adults 18-49 and 25-54, behind only Dog the Bounty Hunter. Jewels did even better in the second season than the first, leaping by 15% in total viewers to a 1.5 million average and climbing by 11% in adults 18-49 and by 8% in 25-54. A&E’s relationship with Simmons started with a one-shot Biography hour of the rock legend and KISS frontman. That Biography episode scored so well in the Nielsens that A&E negotiated with Simmons and the executive producer Leslie Greif to create a 13-episode weekly half-hour series that would delve into Simmons’ life with his common-law partner Shannon Tweed and their teenage son and daughter.

Unlike the stars of The Osbournes, the model for reality shows built around a dysfunctional rock performer and his family, Simmons and his household “are highly functional, intelligent and witty,” said Rob Sharenow, senior VP of nonfiction and alternative programming for A&E and a co-exec producer of Jewels. “They’re in constant motion, and Gene is always working on dozens of projects. It’s more like a scripted series than a reality show.”

While reruns of CSI Miami and The Sopranos are harvesting lots of viewers for A&E, Jewels is one of the weekly firstrun series, along with Dog the Bounty Hunter, The First 48, Intervention and Criss Angel: Mindfreak, that have propelled A&E into the ranks of the 10 highest-rated cable networks.