CBS’ ‘Hunted’ scores huge ratings after AFC Championship Game, but will they last?
In what should not be a surprise to anyone out there, CBS had something massive to celebrate courtesy of their series premiere of “Hunted” Sunday night — the show managed an incredibly massive premiere that could set itself up for quite some time to come.
Overall, “Hunted” drew a 3.6 rating in the key 18-49 demographic (better than any network show this year not named “The Big Bang Theory”) and also 10.8 million viewers. Given that the series followed the AFC Championship Game, otherwise known as CBS’ best lead-in for the entire season, none of this is a surprise. The true test for “Hunted” comes on Wednesday night, when the series is going to premiere in its normal spot at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time while “Survivor” is on hiatus.
The good news for “Hunted” is that even if half of these people watch on Wednesday night, the show will be considered a hit and have a good shot at returning for another season in the future. Trying to get this many viewers to watch could still prove to be a challenge. The big issue is not knowing how many people who watched the first twenty minutes of the reality series stuck around for the closing minutes. As we noted last night, the show got off to a very slow start thanks to some sluggish narration and an overzealous need to tell you how qualified its time of crime-fighters were to locate nine pairs of people who were attempting to go off the grid. By the time we did get to the end of the episode, however, things picked up and the show became incredibly exciting, as we started to see some of these contestants panic and make incredibly stupid decisions. One team’s decision to use an ATM at a bus station proved to be a costly error that led to them being found easily.
The only other new program on the night Sunday was “Son of Zorn,” which drew a 0.9 rating and was likely only airing because of scheduling quirks such as Fox needing to get another episode of the show out there. All things considered, a 0.9 is actually better than how we thought the show would fare.
Would you watch “Hunted” again? Let us know in the comments! (Photo: CBS.)