March 5, 2017 ratings: Time After Time DOA; Chicago Justice solid in Sunday premiere
The Time After Time premiere ratings were something we were very much curious about going into Sunday night, and now that we’ve seen them, one sound effect feels appropriate: It’s the sound of a raspberry that you see on one of those Saturday-morning cartoons.
The latest edition in the widespread-but-not-altogether-successful time-travel genre drew just a 0.7 and a 0.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic for its first two episodes, which suggests to us that the show will be lucky to even finish its run, let alone get another season. Sure, it’s not getting a ton of support from Once Upon a Time (0.9), but this is a rating so low that there is no actual defense for it. How do you stand up for a show that is starting this deep in the ratings basement?
Maybe it’ll show some semblance of a recovery when it airs the next new episode … but we doubt it, given that there are inevitably some people who watched the premiere who won’t tune in for the third episode. That is just commonplace in the modern ratings landscape.
Other premieres of note
The second episode of Chicago Justice — which is still the time-period premiere — held up very well in posting a 1.4 rating after the return of Little Bit Shots with a 2.0. While this is a drop from what it posted during the crossover event, it’s still easily enough of a rating for NBC to be feel good about its future. Shades of Blue followed it with a 1.0. While that’s not exactly great (and it is down significantly from its season 1 premiere), we could envision it returning if it holds firm to that performance the remainder of the season.
Over on Fox, Making History — another time-travel show — premiered to a 0.9 after The Simpsons. Given that it’s not getting the benefit of The Simpsons in the middle of the NFL season, this isn’t a terrible start to what is a pretty funny show. We just don’t think that Fox showed a whole lot of faith in the program putting it here in the first place.
Worrisome figures
Madam Secretary returned last night to a 0.8 rating. Meanwhile, Elementary fell to a 0.6 for the first of its two episodes featuring the return of Kitty Winter. There’s no way CBS can be happy with either one of these performances, especially since almost everything from Monday through Friday is at this point performing better.
What did you watch on Sunday, and are you shocked at all by the Time After Time premiere ratings? Share in the comments below. (Photo: ABC.)