Ratings Roundup: TV viewers continue to watch singing competitions and the dramas that follow them

By Erik Adams | September 24, 2013 | 4:02pm

Aux Features TV

It’s the morning after the first full night of the new television season, and not much has changed: The Voice remains a Nielsen winner, the lone, non-sports sure bet in the NBC staple—with the possible exception of “whatever’s airing after The Voice.” In the first “blind auditions” installment following the return of its original coaches’ panel, the singing competition pulled in 14.67 million viewers and a 4.9 rating among adults under 50, a marked improvement over the 4.2 rating the show earned in its previous fall debut. That gave a considerable leg up to newcomer The Blacklist, whose 10 p.m. broadcast attracted 3.8 percent of viewers in the advertiser preferred 18 to 49 demographic—a lesser performance than the 4.2 18-49 rating notched by Revolution in the same timeslot last year, thus confirming that American viewers prefer post-apocalyptic metaphors about the American revolution to James Spader doing Hannibal Lecter schtick. It helped NBC carry the night, nonetheless.

The viewing public’s insatiable hunger for genre fare carries over to Fox’s Sleepy Hollow, which lost ratings points in its first week of competition from CBS, NBC, and ABC, yet still managed to hang on to a respectable 3.1 18-49 rating. (It also nearly edged out the 2 Broke Girls premiere in total viewers, with 8.56 million compared to the sitcom’s 8.76 million.) And while analysts and insiders believe the networks will exercise more patience with new series this fall, CBS may already be wringing its hands it hands over Hostages, which was felled in viewership numbers and demo rating by both The Blacklist and ABC’s six-year-old Castle. Though, with a real-life hostage situation still playing out in Kenya, perhaps there’s some collective reticence about tuning in to see rogue FBI agent Dylan McDermott yell his feelings about American health care at Toni Collette and family.