Law and Order SVU ratings report: Week of September 27
Did the two-hour Law and Order SVU season 20 premiere earn double the ratings? Here’s the Sept. 27 edition of the SVU ratings report.
With the new Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season officially underway, it’s time for another look at the Dick Wolf series’ TV ratings with the SVU Ratings Report.
The show’s milestone 20th season also involved it moving from Wednesday nights to Thursday nights, and back one hour from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m.
However, because the SVU season 20 premiere was two hours long, NBC had to start it an hour earlier, so this week’s episodes did start in that 9 p.m. hour.
Did all of these moving parts have any effect on the show’s ratings?
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Unfortunately, despite the extra hour (and plenty of extra advertising from the network throughout the week), the series returned to solid but unremarkable ratings.
The first hour of SVU brought in 4.68 million live viewers, while the second hour had 5.49 million live audience members.
That’s 11th out of 16 programs that aired Thursday night (both originals and repeats), and 9th out of 16 respectively.
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It’s no surprise that SVU was beaten by Thursday Night Football; NBC viewers know how powerful the NFL can be in the TV ratings, because it used to air on NBC last season.
What’s more concerning is that the opening hour of SVU season 20 was dead last among the other scripted shows. It was beaten solidly by CBS‘s pairing of Mom and Murphy Brown (7.99 and 7.42 million), and ABC‘s Grey’s Anatomy (7.08 million).
The second episode edged out CBS’s SWAT (5.49 vs. 4.98 million) to be the most-watched show during the 10 p.m. hour. But the competition at 10 p.m. is much weaker than at 9 p.m. so it’s a win, but how much of one? This is a situation that will be worth keeping an eye on.
In other Dick Wolf ratings news, his new series FBI opened strong for CBS on Tuesday night. It had 10.1 million people tuning in to watch the premiere episode, which was almost as much as NBC’s This Is Us (10.39 million).
And that’s pretty good, considering that FBI doesn’t have the critical acclaim or the word of mouth that This Is Us has built up over the past two seasons. But unlike SVU, FBI was also protected with two compatible shows around it—two NCIS series aired on either side of it.
Next. Highlights from the SVU premiere. dark
This just goes to show you how much lead-ins and competition can matter to a TV series. Will we see SVU season 20 improve next week when it settles into its regular time slot? Watch and see.