After last year’s ESPY Awards saw a 36% rating drop-off from 2017, the 2019 edition held firm for ABC.
Last night’s sports awards ceremony, which was hosted by Tracy Morgan, scored a 0.9 rating in the key 18-49 demographic and 3.87 million total viewers, almost identical figures to 2018’s 0.9 and 3.9 million total viewers. One of the highlights of the show was the U.S. national women’s soccer team appearing on stage to accept the best team award for their recent World Cup triump. Forward Alex Morgan also took home the best female athlete prize.
Meanwhile “Love Island” continued to struggle on CBS. The reality competition premiered yesterday to a 0.6 rating and only 2.68 million total viewers, and last night’s broadcast did exactly the same. “Love Island,” which the network is programming five nights a week and sees a group of singles living in island and competing to couple up, lost out to the ESPYs on ABC, “Masterchef” on Fox, and a re-run of “Ellen’s Game of Games” on NBC in the 8 p.m. time slot.
However, CBS was given a little boost by the Wednesday broadcast of “Big Brother,” which built on its “Love Island” lead in to post a 1.0 rating and a touch over 4 million total viewers. This meant that CBS finished second overall on the night with a 0.7 average rating, behind ABC with 0.9 and in front of Fox with a 0.6 and NBC with a 0.5.