Law and Order SVU ratings report: Week of October 18

How did this week’s Law and Order SVU season 20 episode do in the TV ratings? Here’s the Oct. 18 edition of the SVU ratings report.

With the 20th season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season continuing, it’s time for another look at the Dick Wolf series’ TV ratings with the SVU Ratings Report.

Unfortunately, ratings for the long-running series are continuing to plunge. After reaching a series low two weeks ago, Thursday’s episode fell to an even smaller number.

“Accredo” reached 3.96 million live viewers. That’s down 240,000 people from the 4.2 million who watched “Zero Tolerance” live back on Oct. 4.

Overall, SVU remained 10th out of the 18 shows that aired on broadcast TV this Thursday evening. Its 1.0 share among adults 18-49 was good enough to be 7th out of 18 in that demographic.

The good news for Dick Wolf fans is that the episode—which was missing Philip Winchester but had Chicago PD alum America Olivo in a guest appearance—held up when compared to its direct competition.

“Accredo” still lost significantly to CBS‘s SWAT (which had 5.51 million eyeballs), but also won over ABC‘s How To Get Away With Murder (2.75 million). Its margin over the latter actually ticked up to 1.21 million more live watchers, when it was 1.14 million two weeks ago.

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What does this all mean? Less and less people are watching Special Victims Unit live, but since it’s still holding down second place between the three scripted shows that air Thursdays at 10 p.m., it isn’t a total loss. NBC is likely happy to have the second most-watched show in that time slot.

That being said, this is still worth keeping an eye on—new series lows are never good, especially with FBI doing much better for CBS, too. Let’s see if SVU can rediscover its audience as season 20 goes on.