Will Survivor or Modern Family ratings top Empire season 4 by season’s end?
Now, it feels almost like it’s a sure thing. Wednesday night’s ratings revealed that Empire drew just a 2.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic — that’s a small improvement from the past few episodes, but it’s still a shell of what the show once was on Fox. You can ironically say the same thing about Modern Family, given that it posted just a 1.7 rating Wednesday and its ratings are also down year-to-year — the show’s been on that downward trajectory for a good while now.
The question that you’re clearly left to wonder at the moment is a rather big one: Are we getting poised to see Survivor, a show that has been on longer than almost any other non-news show in prime-time save for Law & Order: SVU, actually set to become Wednesday’s #1 show by the end of the season? It’s possible.
For evidence of this, you just have to look at some of the numbers. On Wednesday, Survivor drew its own 1.7 rating, and while it is down year to year like many of the other shows mentioned, its decreases tend to be a little less substantial. It has a very loyal audience and because it’s a different game every season, it’s easier for viewers to come and go here than a show that is super-serialized like Empire. If Survivor retakes the #1 position on Wednesday later this fall or spring what it does is offer more validation to CBS — even with lower numbers, it’s going to be hard for them to ever justify getting rid of a show that is performing better than the majority of their lineup.
As of right now, here are the shows performing better than Survivor on CBS in the demo that have aired more than three episodes: The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon. That’s it. The reality show is performing better than NCIS at this point. Maybe Empire eventually losing to it isn’t so bad, after all — with Modern Family, we do think a time could come when it tops Empire consistently, but with that show’s ratings dropping and with it potentially near its end over the next few years, we don’t think that it will overtake it for long. That’s provided that it ever does.
In the end, what Wednesday’s current ratings show us is that building a devoted fan base is almost more important than having huge ratings a couple of years ago; also, this is a night really in need of a new hit.
What surprises you the most right now about Wednesday ratings — a show like Empire falling so far from where it once was or Survivor, a show that first premiered in 2000, getting close to being #1 again? Share below.
Also, be sure to check out the link here to read our most-recent Survivor review. For more TV news on everything we cover at CarterMatt, like us on Facebook. (Photo: CBS.)