CBS launched summer’s latest newcomer on Wednesday night with the first episode of Kevin Hart’s TKO: Total Knock Out. The reality competition was relatively soft in its debut, though it did help CBS win the evening.
TKO held a reasonable amount of its Big Brother lead-in, averaging a 0.9 rating among adults 18-49 and 4.0 million viewers. That demo score was enough to tie it as No. 1 at 9 o’clock, matching Fox’s 24 Hours to Hell and Back and NBC’s America’s Got Talent encore. Among total viewers, it ranks as the most watched debut of the summer.
The network could not have won the night without Big Brother, however. It ranked No. 1 on Wednesday with a 1.5 rating among adults 18-49 and 5.4 million viewers. Code Black, earning a 0.8 rating in the key demo at 10 o’clock, also won its time slot.
Fox was in the mix with new episodes of MasterChef and the previously mentioned 24 Hours. Each earned a 0.9 rating among adults 18-49. The CW had a new episode of The Originals (0.2 adults). But, most interestingly, it was an encore outing of The Outpost premiere that fared narrowly better among total viewers. With an audience of 800,000, the show also outperformed its first-run telecast the night before.
