Fox expanded its “Masked Singer” franchise with the debut of “The Masked Dancer” last night, as the spinoff continued the formats’ strong ratings trend.
The show’s premiere delivered a 1.3 rating among adults 18-49 and drew 4.8 million total viewers, which easily represented the top non-football programming of the night. That viewership figure is roughly on par with the “Masked Singer” episode from Dec. 9 (which was a series low for the original show), while the demo number is a little lower than the 1.7 that “Masked Singer” averaged in season 4. A 1.3 also represents the best series debut of the 2020-21 season so far, narrowly topping fellow Fox-Ken Jeong show “I Can See Your Voice” which premiered to a 1.2 in Sept.
Ice-T was the first celebrity dancer unmasked. The show is hosted by Craig Robinson and has Ken Jeong, Ashley Tisdale, Paula Abdul, and Brian Austin Green on its judging panel.
“” comfortably won the night overall with a 3.8 averaged rating and around 14.7 million total viewers on NBC. Those figures are subject to significant adjustment due to the nature of live sports. The game itself wasn’t particularly close, as Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers stated their Super Bowl claims with a 40-14 trouncing of the Tennessee Titans.
ABC and CBS aired almost exclusively replays across the night, with both averaging a 0.4 rating (CBS averaged 3.9 million viewers, ABC 2.7 million).
Telemundo and Univision both averaged a 0.2 rating on Sunday, as “Aqui Y Ahor” managed a 0.3 rating and just over 1 million pairs of eyeballs for the latter.
A news episode of “Local” scored a 0.1 and 551,000 viewers for CW, while “Outpost” failed to register a 0.1.