“This Is Us” may have returned empty handed from the Emmys, but the NBC smash hit hasn’t lost its place atop the ratings charts.
The season 4 premiere scored a 1.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic and around 7.7 million total viewers on Tuesday night, comfortably winning the night and almost matching the rating put up by the season 3 finale. However, in less positive news for NBC, that figure is down roughly 40% on last season’s premiere. For comparison, the show fell 24% between its season 2 and season 3 premiere.
Elsewhere, “Empire” returned sans Jussie Smollett to a series low 1.0 rating on Fox and 3.4 million total viewers. That is also the lowest total viewership for the show in its five season run to date.
Meanwhile on ABC, new show “Mixed-ish” achieved the impressive feat of beating its originator “Black-ish.” The prequel debuted to a 0.9 rating and 4 million total viewers, just ahead of “Black-ish” with a 0.8 and 3.5 million total viewers. However, the series premiere of “Black-ish” back in 2014 came in at a whopping 3.3 rating and almost 11 million total viewers, indicating that the standards for what is considered a strong ratings debut on broadcast have shifted somewhat.
“Emergence,” the only other new show to debut on Tuesday night, managed to build on its “Black-ish” lead in at the 10 p.m. slot, coming in at a 0.8 rating and 4.1 million total viewers.
On CBS, “NCIS” came back strongly as the most watched show of the night with 12.3 million total viewers. That was followed up by “FBI,” which came second in total viewership with around 8.8 million.
Overall, NBC won the night thanks to “This Is Us” and “The Voice,” which was watched by 8.2 million pairs of eyeballs. Next came CBS with a 1.0, followed closely by ABC and Fox who both scored a 0.9 average rating.