Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Fam premiere ratings solid; The Orville rises

There’s a lot of interesting ratings news to report on with Thursday night’s lineup, but let’s start things off with the news on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Was it really worth all of the effort for NBC to try and save the show? Based on some of the information that we’re getting right now, the clear answer to that is yes. The numbers are in and the series is stronger than it’s been in some time.

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Thursday night’s season 6 premiere brought in a 1.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic following The Titan Games. While this didn’t come close to competing against some of CBS’ big family comedies including The Big Bang Theory, it is the highest rating for a new Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode since January 2017. Even with that, those two airings were on New Year’s Day as a part of some special programming — the last time we consistently saw the Andy Samberg comedy bring in these sort of numbers was all the way back in the fall of 2015. Sometimes, a show benefits heavily from the network and it’s clear that it’s got a far better home now than it did.

Also, weird as it may sound, it was probably a good thing for fans of the show to realize that watching it live really is important to ensuring that it sticks around for the future.

As for some other ratings on the night…

Fam – While it didn’t get the attention of Brooklyn Nine-Nine online, the Nina Dobrev comedy on CBS actually got the same demo rating in a 1.2 to go along with more than 7 million total viewers. It did a good job amassing an audience, though it’s going to take weeks to determine whether or not that is enough to get the show a larger batch of episodes at some point down the line.

The Orville – Great news for the science-fiction series, as it improved up to a 0.7 rating in the demo with last night’s episode. The question that you do have to ask yourself though is whether or not the big exit at the end of the episode is going to stick. (That’s something that Fox seems to be keeping radio silence on for the time being.)

Thursday is shaping up to be one of the most interesting ratings nights of the week — remember that Grey’s Anatomy has not even premiered yet! We’ll of course be back to cover and discuss all of this more in the weeks ahead.

What did you watch on TV Thursday night? Be sure to share right now in the comments. (Photo: NBC.)