Fox Comedies Score Big Sunday Laughs
- by Wayne Friedman , September 29, 2014
Fox finally
had something to cheer about for the first week of the TV season -- a strong Sunday for the start of its animated comedies. With some massive lead-in help from late afternoon NFL football programming, Fox averaged a Nielsen preliminary 4.9 rating/14 share among 18-49 viewers on the night -- up 21% from the same day a year ago.
Fox’s stellar performer was the season premiere episode of “Family Guy” at 9 p.m., earning a massive 4.5 rating/12 share and up an eye-popping 73% versus a year ago the show’s highest season opening number in four years.
Still, NBC ruled the night with “Sunday Night Football, at a preliminary 7.6/21 (up nearly a half a rating point from the week before) and a 6.1/18 for the night overall.
ABC also had something to crow about, with its “Once Upon A Time” at 8 p.m. earning a healthy 3.4 rating/10 share on the night, more than 30% higher versus a year ago.
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But “Resurrection,” its now second-year drama running at 9 p.m, fell to a 2.2 rating from a 3.8 in its series episode premiere last March. At 10 p..m ABC’s “Revenge” tied CBS’ “CSI” with a 1.4/4. “Revenge” was down 40% from last year; “CSI” was off 30%.
Without late-afternoon NFL programming helping to lead in its CBS programming this week, Sunday night ratings dropped to an average 1.3/4 -- down 70% versus the week before: “60 Minutes” was at a 1.1 rating; “Madam Secretary” earned a 1.4 rating; “The Good Wife” came in at 1.3; and “CSI” earned a 1.4.
Univision averaged a 0.8/2 among 18-49 viewers (2.08 million overall average viewers) for Sunday night -- up one-tenth of a rating from its 0.7/2 (2.05 million average viewers) the week before.
What else can we expect, these shows are great and for some reason I am not surprised that they had so many views. I don’t want to sound stuck up or anything, but I am happy that they had such a high rating, looks like more people are getting into cartoons that make fun of everyday life situation, maybe in their own little twisted way but it is still fun to watch. Another thing, football is a big thing this season, it feels like there are more people getting into the football spirit and that had a big impact on the rating like you said. As for “Once Upon A Time”, I am a big fan of this show myself, it has started to take of and many more people are watching it. It is a show with storybook characters and stories that we wouldn’t think of, since we are so into the Disney version, but this show just shows a twist on those stories that makes it all that likable. One thing I am not surprise is that Univision barely got an acceptable number of views. One thing I know is that Hispanics are more into soccer and baseball than football; maybe that’s why it wasn’t such a big weekend for Univision. Though it is big in “Telenovelas” and news, it isn’t that big on football. As for Resurrection, I have no idea what this show is about since I have never even heard of it, so I’m not surprised it dropped ratings.