RATINGS RECAP: 9/19/16

ABC
8:00 Dancing with the Stars
Viewers: 10.7 million, 18-49 demo: 1.7
10:00 Match Game
Viewers: 4.4 million, 18-49 demo: 0.9

CBS
8:00 The Big Bang Theory
Viewers: 15.8 million, 18-49 demo: 3.8
8:30 Kevin Can Wait
Viewers: 11.1 million, 18-49 demo: 2.6
9:00 The Case Of - JonBenet Ramsey Part 2
Viewers: 8.2 million, 18-49 demo: 1.8

NBC
8:00 The Voice
Viewers: 12.1 million, 18-49 demo: 3.3
10:00 The Good Place
Viewers: 8.0 million, 18-49 demo: 2.3

FOX
8:00 Gotham
Viewers: 3.9 million, 18-49 demo: 1.3
9:00 Lucifer
Viewers: 4.4 million, 18-49 demo: 1.3

CW
8:00 Supergirl (Repeat)
Viewers: 0.8 million, 18-49 demo: 0.2
9:00 Supergirl (Repeat)
Viewers: 0.9 million, 18-49 demo: 0.2

Premiere Week kicked off with solid samplings for the two new shows on the night. As has been the case since 2012, NBC won the first night of the season thanks to The Voice. With new coaches Miley Cyrus and Alicia Keys, The Voice was basically even in viewers and down just slightly in the demo from the premiere last fall. How this show performs over the next couple weeks will probably be more telling about people's feelings about the new coaches. It led into a one hour preview of new Thursday sitcom The Good Place. The sampling was very solid and it beat my expectations as the 10:00 episode delivered a 2.6 demo and the 10:30 episode had a 2.1 The drop across the hour was not too surprising but it's encouraging that it stayed in the 2s for the demo. This was sampling that was very much needed because now it has the very difficult task of airing at 8:30pm Thursdays. We'll know in a few days if it can bring some of these viewers over to the night.

On CBS, The Big Bang Theory came back a full nine tenths lower in the demo than last fall's premiere. This show is still such a beast but that's a pretty heavy drop on a year-to-year basis. Still, this is a show in its 10th season and no other comedies are even approaching it in the demo so CBS has nothing to worry about. As long as they can keep this show going, they will. It led into the series premiere of Kevin Can Wait, which got a very solid sampling of 11.1 million viewers and a 2.6 demo. This is almost exactly what Life in Pieces got a year ago for its series premiere but Pieces led out of Big Bang's 4.7 demo so retention was far better this year. As with any new show, time will tell, but sampling is important and that happened for both Kevin and The Good Place. At 9pm, CBS aired the second part of their JonBenet Ramsey documentary which delivered a decent 8.2 million viewers and 1.8 demo, down a bit from Part 1 on Sunday. I think CBS underestimated this special's appeal as they trimmed it down to two nights and didn't really give it a major marketing push. I wouldn't be surprised if we see more editions of "The Case Of" after this performance.

FOX was pretty low but not terrible with the return of its spring pairing of Gotham and Lucifer. Gotham delivered a pretty anemic 3.9 million viewers and 1.3 demo. This is on par with many late spring episodes, but FOX had to hope it would come back a little stronger. Last year, Gotham premiered to a very disappointing (at the time) 1.6 demo but then it never fell below a 1.2 for the whole season. So maybe there's hope that it will continue to be a very steady show. That's the optimistic view, the pessimistic one is that this show is a sinking ship that will continue its slow decline. At 9pm, Lucifer held on to its lead-in in the demo and built on it in viewers. I think this is a better showing than Gotham because its less of an established show and it had the low lead-in. It was also a big improvement on the series premiere of Minority Report a year ago in this slot. I expected this lineup to be low but not very troublesome for FOX and the ratings from night one further confirm that expectation.

And finally as expected, ABC got a little bit lost in the shuffle. Dancing with the Stars was down 1.5 million viewers and four tenths in the demo from last week's premiere. Things will probably even out for Dancing in the coming weeks but it always has a tough time when it premieres a week early and then has to face an onslaught of new shows in the second week. The season finale of summer game show Match Game did not do much. When these shows have aired outside of their Sunday block, they have been disappointing so I'd expect them to all come back together on Sunday next summer where they do well.

WINNER OF THE NIGHT: The Good Place (NBC)
LOSER OF THE NIGHT: Gotham (FOX)