SEAL Team premiere ratings so-so; Star season 2, Criminal Minds start solid
The David Boreneaz series premiered with a 1.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic, which was an okay start for a fall network show in 2017. It kept the bulk of its Survivor lead-in (1.7), and managed to be reasonably competition in the 9:00 p.m. Eastern spot. It defeated Law & Order: SVU, but that may only be for one week. The big struggle that it faces is that this is the premiere, and there could be more struggles that await the show if it suffers the declines that many shows often do in their second and third week.
Here’s the good news on the flip side for SEAL Team — we feel like the majority of people who chose to watch the first episode did so knowing full well what sort of show this was: An intense military drama. We feel like it will retain viewers fairly well.
This was actually the only new series launch on the night, but there are some notable numbers worthy of some discussion elsewhere.
STAR – This proves more that Fox made a bonehead move not moving Empire to 8:00 p.m. earlier in its run. This show managed to get a much-improved 1.8 airing after the Terrence Howard series, which posted a 2.4 and won the night as a whole.
Criminal Minds – While a 1.3 rating may be far behind some of its past premiere numbers, we think CBS will be pretty thrilled if it gets somewhere around that rating in its later timeslot for most of the season. It did, after all, tie Chicago PD for #1 in that spot.
The Blacklist – Its 1.1 rating is fairly close to what Blindspot got in the Wednesdays-at-8:00 timeslot for its run there last year. It’s not spectacular, but it’s also far from terrible.
Designated Survivor – Its 1.1 rating was probably the most disappointing of the ones mentioned here, given that this show started so much stronger a year ago and has seen its numbers on a pretty steep decline ever since. The show probably was a little too all-over-the-place for its own good in the first season, but if it can stabilize itself now in season 2 we feel like it can stop the bleeding. We do think that it has a much better sense of what it’s supposed to be at this point than it did, so that helps.
Tonight, some of the intrigue is going to come out of seeing if Grey’s Anatomy will continue to pull some strong ratings, and how NBC’s revival of Will & Grace fares in its new timeslot. Finally, was the move of Chicago Fire to Thursdays a smart one? We’ll learn in due time.
For now…
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