American Idol 16 premiere ratings strong; Timeless season 2 meets expectation

Some of the first ratings are officially in for Sunday night’s TV lineup, and we do have to say that most of the numbers lined up with some of what we thought we would see.

Let’s start with the American Idol 16 premiere, which scored a reasonably-impressive 2.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic. While this may be ABC’s best performance for a non-event telecast on a Sunday night in years, remember that they spent a ton of money to make it happen and that typically, Idol sheds a lot of viewers over the course of a season. There was also curiosity around the premiere given that this was the first episode in almost two years. A better test of the series’ future strength will come in April or early May when everyone has settled in — though technically, there is also a test coming on Monday night as the show goes head-to-head against The Voice for the first time. We break that down more in the video below. (Subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube for even more discussions!)

The beneficiary of some of these ratings was Deception, which easily won the 10:00 p.m. Eastern timeslot with a 1.3 rating. Given that this was just the premiere, though, let’s not automatically renew the magic-themed crime show for another season just yet. It should just be happy that it’s off to a reasonably good start.

As for the Timeless premiere…

We projected that anywhere above a 0.7 rating would be considered good news, all things considered, and it did end up succeeding in scoring a 0.8. Remember that it didn’t have anywhere near the lead-in that Deception had, and to go along with that it was also off the air for a good year in between the end of season 1 and the start of season 2. We feel like this is a small victory for NBC, and if it posts this average the rest of the season there’s at least a chance that a season 3 renewal happens.

The bad news, though, is that with this number there is really not all that much wiggle room. If you love Timeless you have to keep watching live. Otherwise, you have to be aware that the show could end at any moment.

Related – Read our full review of the Timeless premiere

What were you watching on primetime Sunday night? Be sure to share some of your thoughts and reactions below!

Meanwhile, be sure to like CarterMatt on Facebook for some more news regarding some of the shows mentioned within this piece. (Photo: NBC.)