The whopping premiere success had by early-week shows like “2 Broke Girls” and “New Girl” did not translate to the latter portion of the week. Neither “Person of Interest” nor “Prime Suspect” made a major mark Thursday, although the former can at least say it performed decently.
CBS’ timeslot replacement posted a 3.1 adults 18-49 rating with 13.2 million viewers. Effectively a wash what would be expected of aged-veteran “CSI,” the premiere performance brings good and bad news. On the plus side, if “Person of Interest” holds at this level, it allowed CBS to effectively duplicate the success of “CSI,” which performed well enough in its new Wednesday night timeslot.
At the same time, since it was a fresh series, one would not have been wrong to look for ratings improvement over “CSI,” at least in the short-term.
But the show at least performed better than “Prime Suspect,” which brought nothing to the table at a 1.8 with 6.0 million viewers for NBC. It cleanly lost the timeslot to “Grey’s Anatomy” (4.2, 10.5 million) and “The Mentalist” (2.8, 13.4 million).
“Charlie’s Angels,” the other new drama launch, only managed a 2.1 with 8.7 million viewers. That is not a good start for ABC’s heavily-hyped 8PM debut.
