Ratings: The Titan Games win big; The Blacklist solid; The Orville falls
Obviously, the big winner at the moment is The Titan Games over at NBC. The Dwayne Johnson reality series ended up drawing a 1.7 and a 1.8 in the 18-49 demographic over the course of the two hours that it came on — a really impressive start for the show. It didn’t get to the level of The Masked Singer, but it’s hard to imagine anyone being upset over that given that the singing competition ended up being one of the biggest winners of the entire TV season.
Now, we just have to see if the ratings hold up for a second week since really, retention is the biggest thing that these shows have to figure out. It’s one thing to get people watching once; it’s another thing to hope that they will watch many times over.
As for some other ratings from last night…
The Blacklist has a decent debut – While it didn’t necessarily bust down any doors, last night’s premiere drew a 0.9 rating in the demo — it’s a good start and if it held firm with that, we almost guarantee it’d come back for another season. The problem here mostly is coming via the show’s move to Fridays, which is where it will be starting tomorrow. (Check out the video below for more thoughts on the premiere; if you like that, subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube for more.) Friday shows always face a struggle, and this show’s got it working against it that it will be airing opposite Hawaii Five-0 on the schedule.)
Bad news for The Orville – This was clearly not a part of the plan. After having a pretty-strong premiere due to an NFL lead-in over the weekend, the first season 2 episode in the show’s normal timeslot generated just a 0.6 rating. That’s enough to immediately make us worried about the future — while we know that the show received a hefty tax credit for a potential third season, this is still a costly show and Fox is shrinking the amount of original programming they have with WWE wrestling coming on board. You should probably go ahead and prepare for some sort of struggle here in the weeks to come, unless someone finds a way to stabilize the show or more live viewers come on board. (One thing worth noting is that the ratings are probably hurt by some of the Tribune Media blackouts amidst a carriage dispute.)
What do you think about the ratings for Thursday night? Be sure to share right now in the attached comments. (Photo: NBC.)