Ratings: ‘The Celebrity Apprentice,’ ‘Bachelor’ return down; ‘Scorpion’ solid

Did Nick Viall prove to be a ratings boost as the star of “The Bachelor” this season, or did Arnold Schwarzenegger prove himself to be the same sort of draw as Donald Trump? We’ve seen the numbers now in full for Monday night, and while neither was a disaster, they’ve both seen better days.

“The Bachelor” – The first appearance from Nick scored a 2.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic, down slightly from the start of Ben Higgins’ season. We heard there were many anti-Nick people threatening to not watch, but in looking at this it doesn’t seem like they had much of an impact. ABC will be thrilled with this number, especially since it’s better than they get in this timeslot all season. Even the Jimmy Kimmel special afterwards posted a 1.1 rating, which is better than most aftershows draw the majority of the year.

“The Celebrity Apprentice” – The premiere of Schwarzenegger’s season drew a 1.3, which is down big from the last season hosted by Trump two years ago. Specifically, it’s down 30% from the average of this past season. We figure that being off the air for so long hurt the show, but so did people like protesting it because of Trump still being listed as an executive producer.

For those wondering, this show led into “The Wall,” which posted a 1.2 for its second episode. Given the rating of the lead-in, this is pretty impressive, and it could be enough for the show to stick around if it stays.

CBS – The only other network airing new episodes, and it fared well. “Kevin Can Wait” (1.4), “Man with a Plan” (1.2), “2 Broke Girls” (1.3), “The Odd Couple” (1.0), and “Scorpion” (1.2) all performed at least equal or better to most-recent episodes. They likely served for many people as nice counter-programming to a lot of the reality TV that was on the air for the night.

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What did you watch on Monday, and are you surprised at all by any of the ratings? Share now with a comment!