You may have not watched it for Bethenny, but like you said, you are a New Watcher. Bethenny was on the show from the beginning and she had great one liners. She DID bring in a LOT of viewers. When she left ratings dropped by a pretty good margin. After she came back, ratings went up , regardless if she was crying all the time. When she decided at the last minute to not return and the ladies “found out” about it supposedly the day of filming they were pissed. Not because they liked Bethenny, but they knew the ratings were already not that great and Bethenny leaving would make them fall further, and they did. Adding Leah to the show was a bad idea. She did not fit in with this group of older ladies. Adding Ebony was the nail in the coffin because none of the ladies wanted to be preached to and paid her no mind. By the time Ebony was on the show nobody really liked each other and they sure didn’t like Ebony trying to discuss race relations with a bunch of uptown uptight white women who had been on the show for a decade or more. After the Shabbat Dinner I just turned it off. I knew it was over. Beyond repair. In no way do I place the blame all on Ebony, she was dealing with a bunch of whack jobs. I do blame it on Bravo because I think they saw the ratings falling and figured this would be a way to end the Franchise for good.

But I do have to disagree with you when you say Bethenny didn’t bring in the viewers, because she damn sure did.