The Blacklist season 4 ratings steady; Amazing Race 29 keeps fighting
The good news here is that the show did fare better than some of the final episodes of The Blacklist: Redemption. In the first preliminary numbers released on Thursday, the two episodes drew a 0.9 and a 0.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic. We do think that in terms of quality, they were worthy of so much more — “Requiem” in particular is one of the show’s best episodes ever, and we hope that this catapults the story even more to a place where we get some great performances in the weeks to come.
Remember here that quality can inspire attention — if there’s anything that could bring live viewers back to the show, it’s a battle between Raymond Reddington and a former friend turned rival. We remain reasonably confident about a season 5 renewal, mostly because the show performs great via DVR and has a pretty loyal following worldwide. The fact that NBC is not the sole owner of the show is really the only challenge.
As for what happened elsewhere on the night, there was a chance to see The Amazing Race 29 basically match The Blacklist entirely, drawing the same 0.9 and 0.8 ratings that it did over the course of the night. Both shows did this, for the record, without much in the way of lead-in support. The other bit of great news for The Amazing Race is that you had 4.4 million viewers, which is its highest overall total of the season, for the first hour. We do think that the show will get that big season 30 renewal after looking at these numbers — it’s possible that season 30 could be the final season given that it’s a milestone number, but it’d certainly feel a whole lot better to go out with a season 30 than a season 29, given that there’s nothing really exciting about 29 as a number.
Hopefully, we’ll learn more about whether or not the two shows are renewed at some point before we get around to the end of the season.
What did you watch on Thursday night? Be sure to share some of your thoughts below!
(Photo: NBC.)