Flirty Dancing premiere ratings so-so for Fox; what’s next?

While we’re not going to sit here and pretend like Sunday night was some incredible night of primetime television, there was at least one program trying to take advantage of some NFL football as a lead-in — Flirty Dancing. Fox wanted to give its version of the UK dating show a shot where it could deliver some good ratings.

(For the record, we did check out the Flirty Dancing premiere and enjoyed a good bit of it. While it wasn’t perfect and we don’t know what the week-to-week staying power for sure is, we do think that there is something to be said about the dances themselves — they’re charming! Also, it’s nice that it feels like there are real people on the show, as opposed to just people who are desperate to get Instagram followers.)

So did Flirty Dancing actually succeed with its first episode? Well, we’d say that the numbers were solid enough, but there’s no guarantee that they will stay anywhere near where they were last night. The show generated a 1.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic and then 3.5 million live viewers. If the series kept these numbers for the remainder of the season, we feel like Jenna Dewan and company would be a lock to return for future episodes. The unfortunate reality here is this: It’s probably not going to happen. Flirty Dancing is set to move to Wednesday nights, where it will be paired with the low-rated Almost Family without an NFL lead-in.

There is a chance that more people will catch on to Flirty Dancing over time, but our fear is that the show may be better suited for a platform like YouTube than a broadcast network like Fox. Its routines are so spectacular that they can be rewatched time and time again there, and they’d certainly reach a much larger audience than they do in the show’s current form.

In the end, we’ll see what happens here! It’s a little bit of a quieter night tonight insofar as new programming goes, but that will change soon. Tomorrow night there will be New Year’s Eve broadcasts all over the place and following that, you’ll have a chance to also check out new episodes of Last Man Standing, Hawaii Five-0, Blue Bloods, and more later in the week. Then, on Sunday the Golden Globes are on the air! Things will be getting eventful soon enough…

Did you watch the Flirty Dancing premiere on Sunday night? Share some of your thoughts on the subject in the comments, and remember to stick around if you do want some other news regarding the series. (Photo: Fox.)