The primetime tournament delivers the second-largest same-day audience for any nonsports program so far this season.
The opening round of Jeopardy: The Greatest of All Time drew big ratings for ABC on Tuesday night — bigger, in fact, than any other primetime series telecast this season.
The limited-run game show, featuring Jeopardy hall of famers Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter and James Holzhauer facing off, drew 14.37 million viewers, the second-largest audience for any entertainment program on the networks so far this season. It trails only Sunday's Golden Globes on NBC, which averaged 18.32 million viewers.
The show's 2.4 rating among adults 18-49 is the fourth-best same-day mark for an entertainment show this season, trailing the Globes (4.7), ABC's Little Mermaid Live (2.6) and the season premiere of The Masked Singer (2.5) on Fox.
The big lead-in also helped ABC's comedy Mixed-ish draw season highs in both total viewers (4.78 million) and adults 18-49 (1.1 rating). Black-ish (3.18 million, 0.8) was also above average, and Emergence (2.27 million, 0.5) ticked up in adults 18-49 from its most recent airing.
Elsewhere Tuesday, the premiere of musical dramedy Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist put up so-so numbers for NBC with a 0.6 in adults 18-49 and 2.69 million viewers. The episode will live on streaming for six weeks before the show's on-air return Feb. 16. The premiere of Ellen's Game of Games drew 1.0 and 1.1 in the 18-49 demo for its two episodes and averaged 4.5 million viewers, behind last season's averages of 1.4 and 6.2 million.
CBS' FBI: Most Wanted premiered to 7.19 million viewers — the biggest audience for a regular series premiere this season — and a 0.8 in adults 18-49, retaining most of the audience from parent show and lead-in FBI (9.3 million, 0.9). NCIS delivered 10.28 million viewers and a 1.0 in the 18-49 demographic. The Resident (0.7 in adults 18-49, 3.72 million) was in line with its season average on Fox, and 24 Hours to Hell and Back premiered to a 0.7 and 2.54 million. The CW aired reruns.
ABC topped the night in adults 18-49 with a 1.2 rating. CBS and NBC tied for second place at 0.9, and Fox followed at 0.7. Univision averaged 0.5, beating out Telemundo's 0.3 and The CW's 0.1.
Bookmark THR.com/Ratings for more ratings news and numbers.
astrakhan42 on January 8th, 2020 at 18:42 UTC »
This might be Alex's last big hurrah as host so he's going out on top.
CoolBeansMan9 on January 8th, 2020 at 17:54 UTC »
It was very entertaining, and I don't watch Jeopardy regularly or like I used to but had to tune in. There were categories, where you had to combine like 3 different answers into one continual answer and these guys just mopped the floor with them, especially Ken. You'd have to pause and think about it for a few seconds to even stand a chance.
I think the trio may have missed four maybe five questions all night.
SkateSpoon on January 8th, 2020 at 17:13 UTC »
Well earned. The event is extremely well produced. A lot of the tournaments/special episodes are bloated with chatting and frills, but here they got right to business. A decent amount of thinly veiled ABC marketing but that's to be expected and it was unobtrusive. Hope we go 7!