It looks like people really missed Last Man Standing which was canceled by ABC and brought back by Fox over a year after its untimely demise. The premiere also boosted the numbers for the series premiere of The Cool Kids and gave the network a solid win on Friday night.
With its premiere Friday night, the Tim Allen-led comedy raked in a 1.8 rating in the adults 18-49 demo and 8.01 million viewers – its highest-rated episode since its season 2 premiere (2.0) in 2012. It acted as a massive lead-in for the debut of the network’s new comedy, The Cool Kids, in the 8:30 p.m. time slot, where it retained most of the Last Man Standing audience with a solid 1.5 demo rating and 6.79 million viewers. The season 18 premiere of Hell’s Kitchen followed the two comedies and posted a 0.9 demo rating and 3.12 million viewers, even with both its premiere last year and its 2017-18 season average. Combined, the 3 premieres helped to give Fox the Friday night win over the other networks by a wide margin – with its 1.3 demo average placing five-tenths above its closest competitor (CBS with a 0.8). The network was also up 86% from the 0.7 it averaged this time last year.
On CBS, Macgyver returned down a tenth from its premiere last season with a 0.7 demo rating and 5.80 million viewers. The season premiere of Hawaii Five-O was also down a tenth year to year with a 0.9 demo rating and 7.42 million viewers. The season premiere of Blue Bloods ended the night for the network and was down two tenths from its premiere last season with a 0.9 demo rating and 8.69 million viewers.
NBC opted to re-air the premieres of Manifest and New Amsterdam and didn’t air any new programming while ABC aired a special about the Jonestown Massacre which was followed by 20/20.
