Ratings: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ season 3 finale, ‘Under the Dome’ series finale steady

It has become somewhat of a common thing over the years for finales to experience a little bit of a rise in the ratings, but let’s be honest here: It’s a heck of a lot harder to rise when you are up against the titan known as NFL football. It continually dominated in total viewers and the 18-49 demographic, and the kickoff game last night between the New England Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers is a sign of things to come.

While the NFL drew a preliminary 8.8 rating (!) in the 18-49 demographic for its big game on NBC last night, all the finales could really do was celebrate just keeping the same ratings that they had the week before. For “Beauty and the Beast,” this simply meant more or less holding onto the same 0.2 rating that it had two weeks ago. You’d probably want the finale to at least get a 0.3, but the week off plus NFL hurt it pretty bad here.

Meanwhile, the final episode of “Under the Dome” ever (the executive producer has already seemingly confirmed that the show is not being shopped elsewhere) drew just a 0.8, which is once again even with the last episode, but still disappointing for a show that was a smash hit two years ago.

With the ratings for “Under the Dome,” it’s not so much an indictment on football or competition; instead, it’s an indictment on what happens when you lose the quality that you first had in the pilot. The show started to lose its way at the end of season 1, and it never really found its way back.