‘Fresh Off The Boat’ Inches Up As Fox Comedies & ‘The Muppets’ Drop; The CW Fall Kickoff OK With ‘The Flash’, ‘iZombie’
UPDATE 3 PM: Three 8 PM shows, ABC’s The Muppets (1.7), Fox’s Grandfathered (1.2) and CBS’ NCIS (2.2) were adjusted up a tenth in the finals, along with Fox’s Scream Queens. That trimmed the Week 3 drop for The Muppets and Scream Queens to a -15% and -14%, respectively. Grandfathered‘s Week 2 dropoff is now -20%. NCIS is flat week-to-week in Live+same day.
PREVIOUS 10 AM: ABC’s Fresh Off The Boat provided a rare high note on a pretty depressing night. With an appearance by Shaquille O’Neal, the sophomore comedy (1.8) was up a tenth from last week, building on its Muppets lead-in (1.6) and ranking as the highest-rated program for the night on ABC and the second highest-rated scripted series on broadcast TV last night behind CBS veteran NCIS.
Most other shows last night were down week to week. ABC’s heavily promoted The Muppets (1.6) dropped another 20% in Week 3 to fall below the delivery of Fresh Off The Boat for the first time. The Asian-American family comedy’s uptick did not carry over to Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1.6) at 9 PM, which was down a tenth from last Tuesday. (Quantico repeat aired at 10 PM).
Fox’s comedy lineup is back at the low levels of last season that had prompted the revamp. There were significant Week 2 drops for 8-9 PM half-hours Grandfathered (1.1, -27%) and The Grinder (1.0, -33%), which may have been impacted by the Yankee baseball game, and Scream Queens (1.1) fell for a second straight week, this time by -21%. All three series get healthy DVR percentage gains but it is hard to make up a low Live+same day turnout. Fox is projecting +58, +64% and +91% Live+7 lifts, respectively for the three comedies. Underlining Scream Queens‘ appeal to young viewers who don’t necessarily watch linear TV, the horror dramedy was again the No. 1 program of the night in teens.
CBS was relatively steady, with NCIS (2.1) even with its fast national from last week and NCIS: New Orleans (1.7) matching its Live+Same Day delivery for the first two weeks of the season. After the impressive Week 2 ratings hold, new drama Limitless (1.7) slipped 11% in its third outing.
NBC aired a Voice recap (2.2), which was expectedly down from last week’s regular episode (3.6). That affected Best Time Ever With Neil Patrick Harris (1.3) at 10 PM. In its final airing behind The Voice, the variety show fell 32% from last week to hit a Live+same day low. Best Time Ever moves to 8 PM next week.
The CW had an OK viewer turnout for the official flip switch as the network started rolling out its fall lineup last night. The Flash (1.4) could not match its record-breaking series debut last year, down 26%, and was off by a tenth from the season finale but it did respectably, matching its Season 1 average, and is expected to close some of the year-to-year gap in delayed viewing. iZombie (0.7), which earlier this week received an order for back-up scripts in anticipation of a full-season order, was down a tenth from its series debut in the time slot last March and up two tenths from the finale.
For the night, the CW actually matched Fox in A18-49 (1.1) to finish No.4 in the demo, and was a tenth behind Fox and CBS in A18-34 (0.8). CBS and NBC were tied for the top slot in 18-49 (1.9), with CBS as solo leader in total viewers (13.4 million).
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