Ratings: America’s Got Talent: The Champions defeats The Bachelor premiere
America’s Got Talent: The Champions video – Be sure to get our thoughts on the premiere in our latest video at the bottom of this article! For more, be sure to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube and take a look at our series playlist.
As it turns out, putting the spin-off show up against the ABC reality franchise turned out to be an enormous win. While The Bachelor may take the social-media crown, it’s pretty clear that The Champions are in fact just that based on the premiere numbers. Monday’s first episode (you can read our review of it over here), which featured the return of Susan Boyle alongside the first-ever US champ in Bianca Ryan, ended up generating a 1.9 rating in the 18-49 demographic and close to 10 million viewers. NBC has to be thrilled with this performance, especially since this was just an experiment and the competition was so high.
For the record, we do anticipate a drop for America’s Got Talent: The Champions given that the format itself was a little bit weird. While we do think that most of the performances were outstanding, at the same time the format was a little strange in between the Golden Buzzer and only two acts per episode moving forward to the finale. (We’re one of the biggest Golden Buzzer defenders out there, but it doesn’t really feel necessary for this show.) If there’s one reason why it won’t drop moving forward, it’s because the National Championship Game in college football won’t be on and sucking viewers away from other things.
The crummy thing for NBC is that it’s hard to know how they’re ever going to be able to follow this up given that they’re using most of their biggest talent for this show. While there may be a few notable acts not included (Terry Fator and Grace VanderWaal are two of the more-notable winners who are MIA), most of the show’s iconic acts are already a part of this.
For those wondering, Manifest followed the premiere with a 1.1 rating, the same total that it posted for its fall finale.
How did The Bachelor fare?
Think in terms of a 1.5 rating and just over 5 million viewers. These numbers are down slightly from the premiere last year featuring Arie, but not dramatically. While we think America’s Got Talent: The Champions took away a tiny sliver of its audience, college football is likely the larger culprit here. We’ll check back on its ratings tomorrow.
If you missed it, you can read our review for The Bachelor premiere now over at the link here.
What did you watch on Monday, and how do you think the numbers for these reality shows are going to fare moving forward? Be sure to share in the comments. (Photo: NBC.)