Ratings: The Sinner premiere, Suits season 7, Zoo season 3
The Jessica Biel – USA mystery on Wednesday night debuted to a fairly impressive audience as a whole, as the installment generated a 0.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic to go along with over 1.6 million viewers. For a summer series with a rather ambiguous title, that’s not a bad start at all. We anticipate that the ratings for this show are also going to rise over time when you consider the quality of the first episode. A little bit of strong storytelling can go a long way in ensuring that you have some long-term viability on the air.
One of the interesting tests for USA is going to be seeing what happens to them in the event that the show does become a runaway hit for them this summer, given that it has source material with a defined beginning, middle, and end already. Do you order another season with a different story, or simply seek out a different sort of limited series in the future? There is clearly an appetite for this sort of thing, mostly because it’s the promise of being able to dive into a show knowing that it isn’t going to last all that long and you can eventually move on to something else.
We’ll be back next week to highlight this further, but for now, let’s be sure to mention that The Sinner actually beat out its lead-in Suits in terms of total viewers. The Patrick J. Adams series also generated a 0.4 rating in the demo, but also just over 1.4 million viewers. To date, season 7 is down about 15% in the demo versus season 6. No real surprise, given that this is about the pace in which many shows are falling these days.
As for the latest Zoo season 3 ratings…
We were hoping that the absence of a new episode of The Night Shift would prove to be an asset in getting the ratings up for Zoo. Unfortunately, that hasn’t turned out to be the case. Thursday’s new episode posted a 0.5 rating, which is even with the week before and may still not be enough to get the show back for a season 4. Because of CBS not really making it clear what its expectations for Zoo are, it’s rather difficult to know what we should be looking for here. There are mitigating factors for Zoo that include DVR data (it’s typically solid in live+7 gains) and Netflix streams, but you do still have to remember that live viewers still are the way that CBS sells ad space on the program. They need those viewers, and we’d like to see the show rise to a 0.6 at least in the weeks ahead.
What have you watched and enjoyed this week? Share in the comments!
Meanwhile, head over here to get some further information now when it comes to The Sinner, including our full review of the premiere episode. (Photo: USA.)