An aggressively programmed Thursday, chock-full of original reality programming on the Big Four, brought a win to CBS despite more year-to-year dips for the returned Big Brother.
A one-hour edition of the competition series brought in a 1.3 rating among adults 18-49, easily the highest-rated telecast of the night. However, that was down from both the previous night’s premiere and the Thursday bow from 2017. Wednesday’s season premiere, the franchise’s 20th in the U.S., earned a 1.5 rating in the key demo.
Fox ranked No. 2 for the night, thanks to another Thursday of The Four. The singing competition averaged a 0.8 rating among adults 18-49 over two hours, while ABC and NBC shared No. 3 in primetime. On NBC, there was a new Little Big Shots (0.7 adults) and two episodes of Marlon (0.6 adults). Both were flat with their previous scores. ABC was also flat with its week-ago premieres for The Gong Show (0.5 adults), Match Game (0.7 adults) and new summer drama Take Two (0.5 adults).
Most-watched status for the night also went to CBS, with 4.9 million viewers across primetime, though Thursday’s biggest telecast was NBC’s Little Big Shots. It averaged just north of 6 million viewers at 8 o’clock.
