“This Is Us” may have returned from the Emmys empty-handed, but the NBC smash hit did not lose its position on top of the rating 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.
“The Resident” returned at a score of 0.8 and a total of 4 million viewers approximately on last season’s finale, a good performance considering it lost its “9-1-1” lead-in from last season.
Meanwhile, on ABC, the 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 rating debut on broadcast have shifted somewhat.
“Emergence,” Tuesday night’s only new show to premiere, managed to build on its “Black-ish” lead-in at 10 p.m. Slot, rating 0.8 and 4.1 million viewers overall.
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. The former produced a 1.3 rating, up 12% on last season’s finale, and down only 9% on last season’s premiere.
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.
