“This Is Us”, ‘Bull” rams through competition

New dramas get strong sampling; The Voice continues to dominate; S.H.I.E.L.D. skids off radar

The first Tuesday of the new season bought more ratings riches for both CBS and ABC while ABC and Fox struggled to remain competitive.

Obviously, the story of the night is the successful debuts of CBS’ Bull and NBC’s This is Us. The latter show benefited from its Voice lead-in, earning a 2.8/10 among adults 18-49 in the last hour of primetime, well ahead of competing NCIS: New Orleans on CBS (1.4/5) and ABC’s Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1.1/4). NCIS however, won in total viewers, 11.1 million to Us’ 10.0 million.

Shield only pulled in 3.4 million viewers. Given the series’ sliding ratings and its arrival in off-net this year on weekends (WPWR begins airing syndicated reruns next Wednesday night at 10 p.m. and Saturday at 5 p.m. starting October 2), you have to question why ABC renewed the show. Yes, Shield is the Chicago Bears of network dramas.

CBS’ Bull also received ample sampling, earning a 2.2/7, even with its NCIS lead-in (2.2/8) and finishing a strong second in its 9 p.m. (ET) time slot. Among critics however, Bull was less-well reviewed (40 Metacritic score compared to Us’ 76.) Obviously, the critics thought Bull was indeed Bullshit.

In other ratings news, The Voice continues to dominate, with a 3.4 rating/12 share, and 12.3 million viewers, compared to ABC’s Dancing With The Stars, which drew 8.8 million and a 1.5/5. Fox remained out of the game with Brooklyn Nine-Nine (1.1/4), New Girl (1.2/4) and Scream Queens (1/3), with Fox even falling behind The O’Reilly Factor on sister network Fox News in total viewers. Fox is banking on DVR usage to see boosted numbers for all three shows.

Finally, a new Mad TV episode on The CW earned a 0.2/1.

These are final numbers, provided by Nielsen via The Programming Insider. To see the complete chart, click here.