Many new TV series premiered last week after weeks of intense network promotion and hype. Now comes the number crunching: Which shows did fans actually watch?
NBC’s “Manifest,” a “Lost”-style drama about a group of airplane passengers who discover that five years have passed between takeoff and landing, got a whopping 16 million viewers, Live + 3 results show — easily making the series, created by Jeff Flake, the No. 1 hit. In these days of splintered viewership, any audience over 10 million is noteworthy.
Also breaking the 10 million mark was NBC’s “New Amsterdam,” a medical drama about the trailblazing medical director of a New York City hospital. Based on the experiences of Dr. Eric Manheimer, the former medical director of Bellevue who learned he had cancer, that Tuesday night series came in with 12.3 million viewers with Live + 3 results. Nicely done, NBC.
Also doing exceptionally well was “God Friended Me,” a faith-based Sunday night series starring Brandon Micheal Hall on CBS. It came in with 10.5 million viewers, which was especially surprising given that Hall’s last series, ABC’s “The Mayor,” didn’t find much of an audience and was canceled this spring.
Over on CBS, Dick Wolf’s “FBI” pulled in 10 million viewers — a solid performance for the procedural set and filmed in New York.
Tim Allen’s return to TV with “Last Man Standing” on Fox (technically not a debut, as ABC originally aired the series and canceled it in 2017) was another strong entry with 10 million viewers.
The next rung of series hovered around the 8 million mark — decent, but hardly impressive, when you factor in heavy network promotion. Two shows in this category were reboots: CBS’s “Magnum P.I.,” starring Jay Hernandez, as well as the network’s “Murphy Brown,” starring Candice Bergen. So much for name recognition.
Despite capturing just 6.8 million viewers, “The Cool Kids,” a new Friday night Fox comedy starring Vicki Lawrence, hinted at authentic audience appeal. Friday night series traditionally do lower numbers than series airing on other nights, and “The Cool Kids” retained most of the audience from its “Last Man Standing” lead-in.
No such luck for ABC’s suicide-survivor drama “A Million Little Things” and “Single Parents,” a comedy starring Leighton Meester. They had the week’s least-watched premieres, with 5 million viewers and 4.91 million viewers, respectively.
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