Fame doesn't save a bar

The name game

Bars that kept their name survived at 63.4%; bars Taffer renamed, at 40.4% (χ² p = 0.0012). The gap holds in every era of the show and survives the fixed-horizon test — at two years, among bars with full follow-up, the intervals don't even touch:

Two-year survival with full follow-up: kept 83.1% [71.5–90.5] (49 of 59) vs renamed 62.5% [55.3–69.2] (115 of 184). By era (kept vs renamed, still open):

Seasons 1–3: kept 40.0% (4/10) · renamed 32.0% (16/50)

Seasons 4–6: kept 51.7% (15/29) · renamed 29.2% (26/89)

Seasons 7–10: kept 81.2% (26/32) · renamed 60.3% (44/73)

See renamed bars in the survival explorer →

Ratings at the finish line

Bars still trading today carry markedly better ratings than bars that closed (medians, with interquartile ranges):

Mann–Whitney: Yelp p = 3.2×10^-8; Google p = 0.001. Coverage is itself survival-skewed: Google ratings exist for 86.3% of open bars but only 39.2% of closed bars (Yelp: 92.4% vs 88.2%) — dead bars' listings disappear.

The Yelp pattern holds across the range — still-open share by rating band:

Did quality buy time? No.

Among bars that closed after their episode aired and have a recorded date, a better rating did not mean a longer life — on either platform. Google: Spearman ρ = 0.227, p = 0.109 (n = 51). Yelp: ρ = 0.136, p = 0.159 (n = 108). The gaps above are real; they just point backwards in time — survival writes the ratings, not the other way round.

IMDb grades the show

266 of the 284 episodes are rated on IMDb; the overall mean is 7.02. Ratings are flat across a decade of seasons — except one:

Season 9 averages 6.42 against 7.09 for all other rated seasons (p = 3.7×10^-6). Read it with its caveats: season 9 episodes carry few votes (median 12), 11 of its 40 episodes are unrated, and season 10's mean rests on 5 rated episodes.

The best and worst episodes, and what happened to the bars

Highest rated

Lowest rated

The lists illustrate the null: the joint-highest-rated episode ever made closed before it aired, and the lowest-rated bar is still open. Episodes of closed bars actually carry more IMDb votes (median 30.5 vs 22) — votes accumulate with episode age, so at most: fame does not protect a bar.