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After several seasons in decline, "The Bachelor" has had a resurgence rare among network reality shows. The glossy dating show, which pairs one hunky (often shirtless) man with dozens of spray-tanned (often bikini-clad) women until he proposes to the ultimate survivor, has also become the unlikely exception in a television season when almost every other show on ABC and its competing networks has declined.

The audience for "The Bachelor" has increased by 3 percent this season to 8.8 million in total viewers and by 7 percent to 3.3 million viewers 18 to 49 years old, the group that attracts the most advertisers. The average audience for that group among ABC's regularly scheduled shows is only 2.4 million viewers.

"It just takes the right gal or guy to all of a sudden regalvanize the audience," said Mike Fleiss, the creator and an executive producer of the show.

But the show's recent success has also been a result of a push by the producers to attract younger viewers, to use social media to promote "live" viewing and, by tinkering with the casting and format, to encourage viewers to return for subsequent seasons after the bloom is off the previous season's rose.

So after 11 years on television and 17 separate rose-covered editions, "The Bachelor" is on the upswing. The show posts the best results in network television on Monday nights with younger women — those 18 to 34. The viewers' median age is 51.1, young in broadcast television terms. ABC's other hit reality series, "Dancing With the Stars," which has featured former bachelors and bachelorettes, has an average viewer age of 61.6.

ABC emphasizes that the show, far from having the economically downscale profile of some reality shows, is especially strong with women of financial means. In homes with more than $100,000 in income, it scores 34 percent above the television average.

"It really plays right into that sweet spot of upscale women," said John Saade, the executive vice president for alternative programs at ABC.

"The Bachelor" did not always look so promising. The series took an inevitable dive in ratings around its 12th season. Its abysmal record in relationships did not help. None of the final "rose ceremonies," in which the bachelor gives his future fiancée a rose and a Neil Lane diamond engagement ring, had ended in marital bliss. ("The Bachelorette," a spinoff, has resulted in two marriages.)

"The show was fading," said Mr. Saade, who has worked in ABC's reality department since before the premiere of "The Bachelor" in 2002.

The turning point, the producers say, came in the form of Jason Mesnick, the earnest divorced father who starred in season 13. He proposed in the finale only to change his mind and dump the ostensible female "winner" (on air) and end up married to Molly Malaney, the runner-up. Mr. Mesnick and Ms. Malaney are expecting their first child together any day now.

"I remember the moment when I let Molly go, and I was uncontrollably crying," Mr. Mesnick said from his home in Seattle. "A producer said, 'Are you sure you made the right call?' " (In "Bachelor" lingo crying over a balcony became known as "a Mesnick.")

Mr. Mesnick, who had competed on "The Bachelorette," represented a turning point for the franchise. Mr. Fleiss decided that rather than tapping a mystery man as the bachelor each season, the show should feature the fan favorites whose hearts had been broken on "The Bachelorette." The continuing characters make the series — and the drama among the heavily made-up women who share a 7,590-square foot house in Agoura Hills, Calif., as they compete for Mr. Lowe's attention — more like the traditional soap operas once on ABC's daytime schedule.

The shift allowed two audiences for the show to coexist: the traditional fans who still get carried away by the romantic promise every season and the viewers who typically get together to watch, whether in person or online, to enjoy the comedy and follow favorite characters.

Mr. Lowe seems to have struck a chord with the first category, possibly because he describes himself as a devoted Christian. The series features plenty of necking in exotic locales, but Mr. Lowe, who calls himself a "born-again virgin" (which probably deserves its own show), kept this season PG-rated.

But "The Bachelor" is also watched by groups of young women, over wine and Twitter in sororities on college campuses and in other meeting places. Tabloid magazines, which once had cooled on "Bachelor" gossip, are back to stoking the furor, luring female readers by putting a shirtless Mr. Lowe on their covers.

Cameron Ross, a 29-year-old client services manager for an Internet radio company, summed up the appeal as: "hunky guy, pretty girls, lots of tears and drama." She said she usually watched with some friends, tweeting with others. "It's not the same to watch it alone," she said.

Mr. Saade, who said the show was both "extremely primal" and "goofy," likens "The Bachelor" to a kind of National Football League for women in that it is a collective live television event — and a sport of sorts.

To encourage live viewing, ABC began embedding viewers' (74 percent of whom are women) commentary on Twitter into the series, encouraging them to forgo the DVR. Last Monday, there were 248,782 tweets about "The Bachelor," making it the biggest show on social media that night, the network said.

The show has made small steps to be more inclusive by casting several African-American contestants and Catherine, the first Asian-American finalist, but it still faces persistent criticism for its heavily white casts. In October, a United States District Judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit against "The Bachelor" producers for not casting minorities in lead roles.

When the suit was filed, Warner Horizon, the division of Warner Brothers Television that produces "The Bachelor," said the accusations were "baseless and without merit" and that the show's producers "have been consistently — and publicly — vocal about seeking diverse candidates for both programs."

For all the guilty-pleasure viewers, there is also a clear subset of fans who find themselves hate-watching "The Bachelor" — not because they hate the show as much as they hate themselves for getting sucked in to it and its silliness time and again.

"There are those who watch it ironically and those who watch it as the most romanticized wish fulfillment imaginable," said Peter Roth, president of Warner Brothers Television. "All of those brokenhearted cynics are really rooting for this to work."

Corey Ann Haydu, an author from Brooklyn, is one of the cynics. A fan almost from the beginning of the show's run, she finds herself exasperated by its corniness, even as she will not miss a week. "I can't stop myself," Ms. Haydu, 30, said. "It's a classic love-hate thing."

She wrote on Twitter with a friend while watching the show recently, using the hashtag #IHateMyself. "When it blows up? That's my favorite part," Ms. Haydu said of the typically failed engagements.

But Mr. Fleiss defended "The Bachelor" for its romantic batting average, saying, "There's never been a 'Bachelor' divorce."

He also argues that, despite the decline of ratings for reality programming on networks, some viewers still want the spectacle of unscripted drama.

"The show is a magnifying glass," he said. "If you're a solid person, it will make you seem that much more so. But if you're a little crazy, you'll seem completely insane."

He cited one of the most-discussed moments this season — when Tierra LiCausi, a leasing consultant from Las Vegas, was sent home after multiple blowups with the other contestants. As she left, sobbing, Ms. LiCausi, 25, told the camera that she had a "sparkle" that intimidates others.

"Nobody wrote that or told her to talk about her dad saying 'You have a sparkle, baby,' " Mr. Fleiss said. Then referring to the Oscar-winning screenwriter of "The Social Network," he added, "Aaron Sorkin couldn't come up with that, and he's a genius."