Ratings: NBC’s ‘The Voice’ season 6 premiere steady, helps ‘The Blacklist’ rise

“The Voice” came back on the air Monday night after a pretty substantial hiatus, and the big news for NBC now is that it’s still singing a happy tune.

The show overall drew a 4.7 rating in the 18-49 demographic, which is a pretty clear sign now that this is the singing show that viewers are really caring for more so than any of the others. While it is down a tenth from last spring, that is still a heck of a retention rate in a genre of television that has seen much of its ratings over the past several months plummet off of a cliff. both “American Idol” as well as “The X Factor,” for example, were down more than 20% from prior seasons. What is also more impressive about this figure is that the competition included the final season of “How I Met Your Mother” (3.6) and also the hometown dates on “The Bachelor” (2.4).

Having “The Voice” back also helped “The Blacklist” improve up to a 3.1 rating, which is its best performance of 2014 so far. The show did a reasonably good job without it, and NBC may look at that number as an opportunity in the event that they want to move the show to a new timeslot in the fall. We would personally advise against it, if for no other reason than that we feel like the show should have two years to really build an audience before going on the move. The failure of “Revolution,” even if it is an inferior show, is one sign that this is very important.

The only other things worth mentioning are that neither “Almost Human” (1.6) nor “The Following” (1.6) is making much of a case at renewal. Personally, we feel like we would bring the former back first, mostly because it has more total viewers and could also hold up better over time. The premise of “The Following” has already been played out.

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Photo: NBC