ABC’s debut of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD opened a strong #1 in the time period with Adults 18-49, defeating NBC’s Tuesday premiere of The Voice by 15% and CBS’ season premiere of NCIS by 35%, to qualify as TV’s highest rated drama debut in nearly 4 years. It was Tuesday’s #1 TV show in Adults 18-49 (tie) and across all the key men demographics. Despite the very strong competition, the ABC drama gained young adults from its first half-hour to its second half-hour.
The ABC show earned a 4.6/14 in the key 18-49 demo, with 11.9 million total viewers. The previous night, NBC’s The Blacklist scored the biggest network debut in a year with a 3.8 rating and 12.6 million total viewers.
From the preliminary numbers today, it was apparent that SHIELD might not do as well as The Blacklist in total viewers. Sites were quick to report this and many seemed almost to almost take glee in this fact.
As it turned out The Blacklist did draw more actual total audience, but SHIELD smoked the strong ratings of the NBC spy drama in the demo that matters most to advertisers. To put the 11.9 million in perspective, Arrow debuted with around 4 million viewers.
Clark Gregg reprises his role as Agent Phil Coulson from Marvel’s feature films as he assembles a small, highly select group of Agents that also includes: Brett Dalton as Agent Grant Ward, Iain De Caestecker as Agent Leo Fitz, Elizabeth Henstridge as Agent Jemma Simmons, Ming-Na Wen as Agent Melinda May and Chloe Bennet as the mysterious computer hacker Skye.
Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD airs on Tuesdays at 8/7c. ABC has announced that it will air the pilot again on Thursday at its normal time. The pilot is also available online here.
Following the pilot, the network aired a video previewing the first season of the show. You can now watch it below:
Source: The Wrap
Irwin Fletcher
I'm an LA journalist who really lives for his profession. I have also published work as Jane Doe in various mags and newspapers across the globe. I normally write articles that can cause trouble but now I write for FTN because Nerds are never angry, so I feel safe.
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