None of the networks had very much to complain about last night, as the fall TV season officially got under way.
CBS: THE BIG BANG THEORY handily won the 8PM showdown with episodes at 5.3/5.4, comparable with the 5.3/5.8 it had in preliminary numbers (on Thursday) last fall, although both of those episodes went up quite a bit in final ratings. That gave SCORPION the strong 3.3 sampling it wanted, and the show held nicely during its hour, declining from 3.4 off of Big Bang to 3.1. Although the season finale of UNDER THE DOME took a big hit after that down to 1.8, it was still up 0.2 from last week.
FOX: GOTHAM‘s 3.2 debut was comparable to the preliminary 3.4 SLEEPY HOLLOW had last fall, and it actually climbed 0.1 from the first half-hour to the second, a very good sign. Gotham also hit the bulls’-eye with the advertiser-craved Male 18-49 audience. Sleepy Hollow itself was at 2.0, which not unexpectedly was down steeply from that 2013 premiere, but was in keeping with the 2.2 the show had for its January season finale.
NBC: THE VOICE fell a full point from the preliminary number for last fall’s season premiere to 3.9, but that once again was consistent with the show’s drop over the course of last season. The question will be how the show will hold up against much stronger 8PM competition in the weeks to come. THE BLACKLIST was off 0.4 from last year’s preliminary premiere rating to 3.4, but of course it had that much stronger Voice lead-in in 2013. It was up a big 0.8 from last spring’s season finale.
ABC: DANCING WITH THE STARS, facing monstrous competition, fell 0.4 from last week to 2.0, which falls under the category of “could have been worse.” The “preview” airing of FOREVER dropped half a point from Dancing to 1.5, but its real test will come tonight when it airs in its regular timeslot (and considering how ABC has been doing in the Tuesday 10PM hour, a 1.5 wouldn’t look bad at all)
CW: AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL was untouched by all the new arrivals and stayed at 0.4.
Along with the timeslot premiere of Forever, tonight greets the new(-ish) NCIS: NEW ORLEANS, as well as season premieres throughout the ABC, NBC and CBS schedules.
DEMOGRAPHIC DETAIL
The chart above goes beyond the adult 18-49 rating, adding other key advertiser sales demographics (adult 18-34 and 25-54 ratings), audience skews (women 18-49, men 18-49 and adults 50+ shares), and total viewership (ages 2 or more expressed in thousands of people).
About the Author
