*With “Empire” on hiatus, its time slot rival “Black-ish” posted its best ratings of 2015 in the coveted 18-49 demo.
According to preliminary estimates from Nielsen, ABC won Wednesday in key demos thanks to its comedy block of “The Middle” (1.7 rating/7 share in adults 18-49, 7.6 million viewers overall), “The Goldbergs” (1.9/7 in 18-49, 7.2 million viewers overall), “Modern Family” (2.9/10 in 18-49, 9.3 million viewers overall) and “Black-ish” (2.4/8 in 18-49, 7.4 million viewers overall) — all of which incorporated April Fool’s Day jokes into their storylines, reports Variety.
The 2.4 rating is the best for the first-year comedy since Nov. 19. (It did hit a 2.3 once in 2015, but that was on a night when “Modern Family” logged a 3.4).
“Middle,” which should round up to a 1.8 in the nationals, and “The Goldbergs” were both down a little from last week and placed second in their 8 o’clock hour. “Modern Family” was again the night’s top show in 18-49 and 25-54 (3.8/11) and up a tick from last week but still on the low side, while “Black-ish” was up 0.2 or 0.3 vs. last week depending on whether it holds at its prelim score in the nationals.
CBS won Wednesday’s opening hour with “Survivor” (2.1/8 in 18-49, 9.5 million viewers overall). From 9 to 11 p.m., though, “Dovekeepers” (0.9/3 in 18-49, 6.4 million viewers overall) was down a tick from its low-rated part one of the previous night as the net did roughly half the 1.75 it averaged last week with original episodes of dramas “Criminal Minds” (2.1) and “CSI: Cyber” (1.4).
NBC’s 9-11 p.m. crime dramas benefited from the lighter competition, with “Law & Order: SVU” (1.5/5 in 18-49, 6.3 million viewers overall) rising two tenths from last week and “Chicago PD” (1.6/5 in 18-49, 6.9 million viewers overall) up a tenth.
Fox’s “American Idol” (1.7/6 in 18-49, 8.4 million viewers overall) matched last week’s Wednesday season low, though it figures to round up to a 1.8 in the nationals. It placed second to ABC from 8 to 10 p.m. in key demos while winning the two-hour block in total viewers.
In total viewers: Fox, 8.4 million; CBS, 7.4 million; ABC, 7.0 million; NBC, 6.5 million; Univision, 2.8 million; CW, 2.0 million; Telemundo, 1.4 million.
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