A move to Fridays didn’t hurt Fringe.
The multidimensional Fox drama drew 4.9 million viewers in its new time slot (which featured Christopher Lloyd as a guest star), roughly the same number who tuned in during its current third season. In the 18-49 demo, Fringe was up 12% from its last original, “Marionette,” which aired on a Thursday (1.9 vs. 1.7).
A move to Fridays normally acts as a death knell for any series, and though Fringe has only aired one episode in its new home, this marks a promising run for the rest of its season. Fox’s Kevin Reilly noted at the Television Critics Assn. press tour that if Fringe held its average on Fridays, it would return for a fourth season.
Fringe‘s lead-in, Kitchen Nightmares, averaged 4.3 million viewers at 8 p.m. and had a 1.9 rating. Both Nightmares and Fringe helped the network win the night.
Elsewhere, CBS aired the series finale of Medium (7.8 million, 1.6), up 23% in the demo. Helped also by repeats of CSI: NY, the network was the night’s most-watched.
ABC aired Supernanny (4.3 million, 1.1), What Would You Do? (5.1 million, 1.7) and 20/20 (5.4 million, 1.5), the latter two up in the adult demos.
A two-hour Dateline (6.4 million, 1.3) ran on NBC following a rerun of Minute to Win It (4.7 million, 1.2).
