Ratings: ‘Once Upon a Time’ season 4 premiere, ‘Family Guy’ – ‘Simpsons’ crossover huge

As it turns out, enormous marketing campaigns and stunt publicity do turn out good ratings most of the time. Sunday night’s ratings are proof of it.

The big winners – “Once Upon a Time” was way up in introducing “Frozen” characters to the mix; the season 4 premiere scored a great 3.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic that brings the show back to where it was during the first two seasons. There’s no other explanation for the jump, but will some of these people continue to watch? That’s what we are interested in seeing.

Also, Fox scored big with all of their publicized events. The premiere “The Simpsons” (3.9) was aided by the death of a character, this carried over well to “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” (2.5). Meanwhile, the “Family Guy” – “Simpsons” crossover scored a massive 4.5, which is probably going to make someone at Fox likely beg for this to become an annual tradition.

In the middle – The season 2 premiere of “Resurrection” scored a decent 2.2, but we are getting an “Under the Dome” vibe with these ratings. The show is good enough to be entertaining, but not fantastic enough seemingly to keep viewers hooked.

The not-so-great – “Revenge” and “CSI” both performed to a ho-hum 1.4 rating, while all of CBS lineup skewed incredibly old. “Madam Secretary” got over 12 million viewers, but still just a 1.4. That’s “Blue Bloods” territory when it comes to skewing old. So far, it seems like CBS bungled moving “The Amazing Race” to Fridays, since it would draw at least better demo numbers than this. We don’t think CBS is actually going to move either of them, though.

We’ll have more ratings news soon, but for now, tell us what you think about the performance of this lineup in the comments! Also, you can sign up now to get some further scoop on all we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter.

Photo: ABC