Last Man Standing season 7 premiere ratings dominate; Blue Bloods returns OK
Friday night’s premiere — the first episode to ever air on Fox, ended up dominating all competition with a 1.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic and then also more than eight million viewers to go along with it. These numbers are a big improvement from its most-recent season on ABC more than a year ago, and we attribute that to a combination of promotion, the audience missing the show, and then also the perspective of the show itself. The series appeals to a more conservative audience than the majority of other network shows, and it is therefore able to take hold of an audience that also made Roseanne a huge hit on ABC earlier this year.
The ratings for Last Man Standing also carried over to The Cool Kids, which scored an impressive 1.5 for its premiere. If it keeps that up, it’s a sure thing to make it for the remainder of the season at the very least.
Related – Check out the full Last Man Standing preview for next week
What the ratings for these two shows did was upset an apple cart over at CBS, which routinely posts big wins on Friday nights. Blue Bloods was still the most-watched show of the night with over 8.6 million viewers, but it was down both in viewers and the demo from the start of season 8. Meanwhile, Hawaii Five-0 matched its 0.9 rating for its own premiere, whereas MacGyver started things off with a 0.7. These aren’t bad Friday ratings by any means, given that it’s really hard to have a successful show and air it in this particular timeslot.
We’ll see how the ratings for all of these shows fare next week — we tend to expect much-hyped shows like Last Man Standing to decline in their second week, but you also to remember that this premiere was available online early — therefore, its rating may have been lower because of that. It could avoid a drop-off because those who watched the premiere early may now come back and watch live.
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