‘The World’s Best’ To Premiere Immediately After The Superbowl
Monty Brinton/CBS Reading Time: 3 minutes
CBS is dipping it’s toes into the reality talent competition genre with its new variety show The World’s Best. The show is set to feature amazing acts of all kinds from around the world which will be evaluated by celebrity judges and a panel of experts.
The show just started taping, so we don’t have too many details so far, but CBS has now revealed when the premiere will hit the air. The World’s Best will have its first episode broadcast on Sunday, February 3, 2019 on CBS in the post-Superbowl slot! (That’s approximately 10 pm Eastern Time, though in reality the game often runs later than that.)
Putting this show right after the Superbowl means CBS has tremendous faith in its success. The Superbowl is pretty much always the highest-rated telecast of the year, and whatever comes on immediately after it’s over has a good chance of retaining a decent amount of that viewership. As such, whichever network has the rights to air the big game in a given year usually chooses another heavy-hitter as the lead-out program.
Notable past selections have included the sophomore season premieres of Survivor (2001) and The Voice (2012), Superbowl-themed episodes of popular sitcoms such as All In The Family (1978) and Friends (1996), and series premieres of shows like The Wonder Years (1988) and Undercover Boss (2010) so The World’s Best will be in good company. Most of the recent Superbowl lead-outs have had between 20 and 30 million viewers, so hopefully The World’s Best will be able to reach a number of people that’s similar (or maybe even higher – you never know!).
CBS hasn’t yet announced a regular timeslot for The World’s Best, but if subsequent episodes start airing soon after the early February premiere there might be a bit of overlap with NBC’s America’s Got Talent: The Champions, another show featuring acts of all genres from across the globe competing to be the “best of the best”. While I doubt the two shows will actually air in the same timeslot (though American Idol and The Voice did a few times this past spring, so I’m not completely ruling that possibility out) there is almost certainly going to be some overlap in terms of season span since it’s looking like AGT: The Champions will run from January to mid-February (it will have seven episodes the premiere is January 7, which is a Monday) and the World’s Best premiere will be right after the Superbowl in early February.
It’ll be interesting to see which of the two programs fares better in the ratings overall; I would say Champions might be at a slight advantage since it’s starting first and is a spin-off on one of the most-watched and highest-rated shows on television right now. However, World’s Best should have a strong start by kicking things off in that post-Superbowl spot, so they might be able to reel in a good amount of regular viewers that way.
