Ms. Palin was in the audience on Monday night as her daughter Bristol performed on the penultimate episode of “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC. On Tuesday morning she flew to Phoenix, the first stop on a 13-state tour for her second book, “America by Heart,” which is expected to be a best seller. About 23 million people watched Bristol Palin on “Dancing” on Monday night. She will join her mother on segments of the book tour, which is scheduled to start on Tuesday night and to resume after Thanksgiving.
The publisher, HarperCollins, calls the book a “highly personal testament to her deep love of country, her strong roots in faith, and her profound appreciation of family.” It will have a first printing of one million copies; on Tuesday afternoon it was ranked No. 10 on Amazon’s ever-changing best-seller list.
Like Ms. Palin’s tour last year for her memoir “Going Rogue,” this promotional trip is carefully choreographed. It is taking this potential presidential candidate to critical states on the electoral map, among them Ohio and Iowa, including stops in towns rarely included in such tours. (For instance, she plans to swing through Spirit Lake, Iowa, population about 4,300.) “It’s Sarah Palin’s world, and we’re all just watching it,” the ABC correspondent John Berman said on “Good Morning America” on Monday, attesting to the amount of attention she has been receiving.
But there was sobering news on Tuesday about one of Ms. Palin’s other products, the reality show “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” In its first week the series drew nearly five million viewers to TLC, the highest-rated premiere ever for that channel. But in its second week the series suffered an unusually steep ratings drop, to about three million viewers. In the 18- to 49-year-old demographic, her audience dipped to 885,000, from 1.8 million the premiere week.
The first episode benefited from an aggressive marketing campaign. A TLC spokeswoman played down the ratings dip, saying, “We are very happy with the ongoing strength of ‘Sarah Palin’s Alaska,’ and it continues to drive big ratings gains for TLC.”
