Ratings: ‘Lethal Weapon,’ ‘Designated Survivor,’ ‘Speechless’ all off to solid starts

Wednesday night was an eventful night of television. There were multiple season and series premieres, a notable finale, and a few other things happening here and there. While there isn’t necessarily any one headline to shout from a balcony somewhere, most of the networks have something to feel pretty good about.

The good news – Among the new series, probably the one most worthy of praise is “Designated Survivor.” Getting a 2.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic is strong at 10:00 p.m. Eastern, especially when it improved on the show’s “black-ish” lead-in (2.0). “Lethal Weapon” (2.2) also got off to a pretty solid start for Fox, while “Speechless” (2.0) retained the entirety of the audience of “The Goldbergs.”

The big asterisk for all of these shows is that we’re talking here about premieres, and there is a lot of time for things to ebb and flow for all of them. If these shows retain over 75% of this audience through the coming months, odds are that all of them will be renewed. Beyond that, it’s a little bit of a mystery.

Elsewhere, “Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X” (2.3) declined only slightly from the fall premiere last year, while “Blindspot” (1.3), “Law & Order: SVU” (1.8), and “Chicago PD” (1.6) suffered only minimal declines.

The bad news – Is getting a 4.1 rating bad news? Hardly, but “Empire’s” season 3 premiere was down more than 35% from the start of last season. Meanwhile, “Modern Family” (2.6) fell about 19%, a sign that this show continues to be on the decline. Neither is going anywhere, but their smash-hit status may not be precisely what it once was.