Blue Bloods premiere ratings win Friday; Inhumans low; MacGyver down
The first episode of the fall, one that featured the departure of a beloved series regular, drew a solid 1.1 rating in the 18-49 demographic that did enough in order to claim victory on the night. This is a show that has drawn a consistent audience over the years, and without giving anything away within this article, we are certainly worried about whether or not there will be a lasting impact for what we actually see the remainder of the season.
As of right now CBS may need Blue Bloods to perform well given that the remainder of their lineup was somewhat of a disappointment. The season 2 premiere of MacGyver drew just a 0.8 rating as a whole, while Hawaii Five-0 posted an okay-but-unspectacular 1.0 for its first episode without Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim. For the time being, though, it does feel as though Kim and Park’s exit hasn’t left an enormous void in the show’s ratings — we’ve seen it get 1.0 ratings in the past and much of the core fan following still seemed to be there on the night.
The good thing about these shows is that they have a devoted audience, and we imagine that the ratings will actually rise in the colder months when there are fewer things to do on Friday nights.
The Inhumans crash to earth
We knew in advance that Marvel’s ambitious ABC series was going to start with low ratings (it was already in IMAX theaters), but even with that the 0.9 and 0.8 rating for the first two episodes is pretty terrifying for the show’s future. Remember that the reviews for this show were extremely divided so it won’t be a shock to see the show pulling a 0.6 rating at this point next week. Agents of SHIELD may actually not look so bad ratings-wise by the time we make it to the end of the run. (The only hope is that some of the IMAX viewers may come back to the show at some point in the future.)
We really like the cast in the series and wanted it to perform better; unfortunately, the biggest issue with Inhumans is that it’s an ambitious comic-book property that can’t be made completely on a television budget. It’s going to be really hard to replicate what the show wants to with the amount of money available to it.
Poor start for The Exorcist
It was somewhat of a surprise renewal, and with just a 0.5 rating for the premiere, we certainly hope that there is some sort of recovery for the Fox series.
(Photo: CBS.)