The Orville season 2 premiere ratings solid, up versus season 1 average

We anticipated that there would be some good news today when it comes to The Orville season 2 premiere ratings — given the show’s lead-in (NFL football), how could there not be? The NFL benefited this show really well back when it launched in the fall of 2017, though it was inevitable that the ratings would be down this time around for a couple of different reasons. First and foremost, it’s a holiday weekend so the majority of viewers out there have a little bit less when it comes to free time. Meanwhile, it’s also the start of the second season and you don’t have some of that viewer curiosity that was first out there before season 1.

Related The Orville video – Be sure to check out some of our thoughts on the premiere at the bottom of this article! Meanwhile, be sure to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube for some other insight and daily TV discussions.

Overall, the first episode of the season Sunday drew a 1.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic. The good news here is that this does show some element of improvement from the season 1 average — it’s a better rating than any episode had last season that did not air following the NFL. The bad news is that it did perform far worse than the two NFL episodes last year. We know that the ratings will decline when the series shifts back to its typical timeslot on Thursday, largely because there’s really no other way to imagine this going. The Orville is a series that doesn’t have to be watched live in order to be enjoyed, and that is probably one of the things that works against it when it comes to its ratings.

Also, it’s about to take a pretty steep drop-off in terms of lead-in. Going from the NFL to airing after a new episode of Gotham is a big change in the ratings — we love Gotham as much as the next person but we’re certainly not going to pretend like the show is something that it’s not.

All things considered, the premiere ratings have to be considered a win here given that we are talking about a show that was off the air for a solid year and sometimes, it’s hard to get any viewers to come back at all after this sort of lengthy absence.  It’ll still be a few weeks, though, before we are able to make any sort of accurate determination, one way or another, when it comes to the future of this series.

Related News – Have you had a chance to see more of what’s coming on the next new episode?

What do you think about the latest The Orville season 2 premiere ratings? Be sure to share some of your thoughts right now in the comments. (Photo: Fox.)