When Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s All in the Family and The Jeffersons was announced, many people had reservations about it but the live event premiered last night and it put up solid numbers for ABC.
From 8-9:30 PM ET, ABC’s live, star-strewn Lear sitcoms reboot averaged 10.4 million viewers and a 1.7 demo rating to outstrip all Wednesday night competition. That’s a 6-month high for ABC in the 90-minute Wednesday time period since the CMA Awards back in November. Excluding trophy shows it’s ABC biggest haul since the first Wednesday night of the TV season. The live event allowed ABC to win the final night of the 2018-19 season by strong margins, beating runner-up NBC on Wednesday with season finales of its three Chicago dramas by 600K viewers and 3/10ths in demo rating.
ABC’s (1.3, 7.768M) marked its most-watched season-closing Wednesday since May 23 of 2007.NBC (1.0, 7.152M) was its closest competitor on both counts, followed by CBS (0.8, 4.252M), Fox (0.6, 1.900M) and CW (0.2, 950K).
