Prodigal Son Is The Top New Show On A Very Slow Monday Start For Premiere Week

Premiere week kicked off last night and while some of your returning shows saw some love, it was mostly a dead zone for new series trying to leave their mark on Monday night.

Fox can claim a very small victory that it did have the top new series premiere for the night with Prodigal Son, which scored a 1.0 rating in the coveted 18-49 demo and 4.2 million viewers. It’s not a huge demo number by any means but the series does have strong pre-launch tracking and since this is Fox’s first full season as an independent network, it’s a decent start. The only concern that shows rarely move up in the demo so a 1.0 doesn’t leave it much room to fall if people didn’t dig the premiere.

Fox had a clear victory for Prodigal’s Son lead-in, 9-1-1. The much-hyped season 3 premiere scored a 1.6 demo rating and 7.1 million viewers. 9-1-1 was steady with its season 2 premiere which has to be applauded during these times of downward trends. The combo of 9-1-1 & Prodigal Son actually gave Fox its highest-rated Premiere Monday (18-49 L+SD) in 10 years.

If you were a series premiere last night, only Fox had a small reason to celebrate. Let’s start with NBC which had a good start with The Voice scoring a 1.7 demo score and 8.8 million viewers. It was another premiere low for the long-running singing competition and it was down double digits from last fall’s premiere but it still led the night across all networks and it’s still a solid number to kick things off for the network. This should’ve carried over to the series premiere of  Jimmy Smit’s Bluff City Law but it looks like viewers of The Voice fled to watch something else. Bluff City Law scored a 0.8 demo rating and 4.8 million viewers. That’s almost a full ratings point drop in the demo from its lead-in. NBC already gave Bluff City Law a backup script order, showing some confidence in the series but the tracking on the show hasn’t been too high which doesn’t bode well for future interest. NBC says it’s going to pay more attention to digital performance since they’re launching their Peacock streaming service soon so perhaps strong digital performers that don’t register in live viewing, could get a reprieve if their digital numbers are strong.

The usually strong CBS is missing The Big Bang Theory right about now because their new launches for the night didn’t really make a dent either. The second season of The Neighborhood kicked off the night with a 0.9 demo rating and 5.73 million viewers. The premiere is down from its 1.3 demo launch and gives it a series low. The finale scored a 1.0, which was its previous low. The new series Bob Hearts Abishola followed with a 0.9 demo rating and 5.88 million viewers. The good news is that it matched its lead-in’s demo score and increased a bit in total viewers but it was down a tenth from the premiere of Happy Together in that same timeslot last season. This is also a new Chuck Lorre comedy series, the very same man who gave them mega-hits like The Big Bang Theory, Two And A Half Men and Mom so CBS probably has high standards from the shows he launches. The new drama All Rise was up next and scored a 0.7 demo rating and 6.01 million viewers. That puts it two-tenths lower than the 0.9 demo rating that Magnum P.I. averaged in the time slot last season. Encouraging for the series was that viewership saw gains in the second half-hour of the hour-long series so we’ll have to wait and see how that translates next week. CBS ended their night with Bull which hit a 0.7 demo score and 6.3 million viewers for its fourth season premiere, down from its season 3 premiere’s 0.9 and 7.33 million viewer audience, but on par with its season finale this past spring (0.7, 7.19 million viewers).

ABC saw its usual second week hit from Dancing With Stars which scored a 0.8 demo rating and 6.63 million viewers, down two-tenths from the already low 1.0 demo rating it scored for its premiere last week. The season 3 premiere of The Good Doctor grabbed a 1.0 demo score with 6.61 million viewers in the 10 PM hour, down from its 2018 premiere (1.3, 7.35 million viewers) and its second season’s overall averages (1.1, 6.73 million viewers).

What have we learned from the first night of premiere week? People really aren’t watching TV live anymore and it’s making network TV die a very slow death.