The Resident premiere ratings solid after NFC Championship Game

While its long-term future still remains to be seen, Fox has a good bit to be happy about in terms of The Resident premiere ratings on Sunday night.

The medical drama, which aired just after 10:00 p.m. Eastern at the conclusion of the big game, ended up generating overall a 2.7 rating in the 18-49 demographic and almost 9 million viewers. That’s not as good of a start as we’ve seen from other shows in this timeslot following an NFL conference championship game, including Hunted on CBS and The X-Files season 10 on Fox. Yet, there were two big things working against The Resident from the start.

1. This is not an easy show to promote – Think about that for a moment. How do you market a medical drama about a guy trying to fix what he finds to be a broken system? It’s not the most unique premise on paper, even though the series itself feels a little more fresh when you actually watch it. Also, while we are familiar with Matt Czuchry and Emily VanCamp from other series, we’re not altogether sure that these are the sort of names the mainstream TV-viewing audience knows altogether well.

2. The NFC Championship Game was a dud – Unless you really like the Philadelphia Eagles, there is a reasonably good chance that you stopped watching this game well before the closing minutes. That meant that The Resident had a smaller lead-in than it could have. There’s not really anything that  the show could do about that.

If this series ultimately retains just 50% of that premiere demo audience the rest of the season, Fox will consider it a hit and give it another season. That’s what we would focus on if you enjoyed the premiere and hope for it to stick around. Nobody expects for it to hover around a 2.0 for the rest of the season. Very few shows do that these days, especially one that is airing at the same timeslot as The Bachelor over on ABC.

Related – Did you read our full review for The Resident premiere?

We’ll have some more insight when it comes to The Resident and the future of the series as it goes along. For now, share what you think about the premiere ratings in the comments! You can also like CarterMatt on Facebook for some other insight regarding the series whenever you want. (Photo: Fox.)