New Series ‘New Girl,’ ‘Unforgettable’ Open With Strong Ratings

CHICAGO – Demographic numbers aren’t in yet and there certainly isn’t a story as huge as Monday night’s ludicrous ratings for “Two and a Half Men,” but we thought you might want to know that FOX’s “New Girl” and CBS’s “Unforgettable” seem to be off to good starts. “Glee” was down in its season premiere while “Ringer” dropped in its second week.

Unforgettable Photo credit: CBS

“New Girl” brought in a 7.4 rating overnight, a very strong opening night number, surely buoyed by positive reviews, including a 4.5 out of 5 from our own Patrick McDonald. Coming out of a 6.6 rating for “Glee,” the Zooey Deschanel comedy actually improved on its popular lead-in. The night dipped a bit to the 4.7 rating for “Raising Hope,” but that was just a bit down from its first-season premiere of 4.9. With the hype that comes with series premieres, maintaining those numbers to the second-season is pretty good news. Watch “Raising Hope” people. It’s great.

In other new series news, “Unforgettable” debuted at 9pm CST last night with a very good 9.3 household rating. That impressive number was up from the second-hour of a double “NCIS” premiere last year. This year, “NCIS” notched a 12.2 and “NCIS: Los Angeles” was up from last year with a 10.6. CBS dominates Tuesday nights and “Unforgettable” looks to be another hit. We’ll see what happens next week.
Speaking of second-week drops, “Ringer” fell 28% from its strong (for CW) premiere numbers and notched a 1.8 household rating. Not horrible for The CW but ratings better not continue to drop.

In other news, “Body of Proof” notched a 6.9 household rating, which was actually down from last year’s series premiere of “Detroit 1-8-7.” If those numbers don’t improve, ABC could pull the plug on the Dana Delany procedural. The second week of “Parenthood” notched a 3.8 rating — not a strong number but demos will tell more of the tale for this always-on-the-bubble show.