Summer of Talent: The Rise of ‘AGT’ and Fall of ‘Songland’ in the Ratings
Trae Patton/NBC Reading Time: 1 minutes
America’s Got Talent and Songland both had strong starts, but did that momentum continue in week 2?
It certainly did for America’s Got Talent; while the show dropped in ratings by a tenth (1.6 this week versus the season premiere’s 1.7) the show managed to accomplish a rare feat in TV by actually rising in viewership numbers from episode 1 to 2 instead of dropping like most other programs. The episode had 9.8 million viewers (last week’s had 9.7).
As for Songland, the numbers were more typical of a week 1 versus week 2 drop-off. It dropped two tenths in the ratings – from 1.2 last week to 1.0 now – and 4.7 million viewers, down over one million from last week’s audience of 5.9. But again, this is fairly typical of most shows, and things should be fine as long as ratings don’t drop too much further. (Remember, this is a freshman summer show in the 10-11 pm slot, so the network probably isn’t expecting it to pull in huge numbers like AGT.)
Together, both shows led NBC to a landslide victory for the evening, giving the peacock network a primetime average rating of 1.4 and viewership average of 8.1 million.
