Suddenly, Beverly Hills, 90210 isn’t the hottest zip code in Los Angeles. Fox’s “BH90210” has suffered the steepest “live” TV ratings drop — down 60% from series premiere to last week’s penultimate episode — of all summer shows on broadcast.
Back on Aug. 7, “BH90210” debuted to a strong 1.5 rating among adults 18-49, the most-coveted demographic among advertisers on entertainment programming. Last week, in the fifth episode of its summer run, “BH90210” fell all the way to a 0.6 rating in the main demo. Between those two episodes there was a 1.0 (adjusted up from a 0.9), 0.8 and 0.7, in order, according to Nielsen’s Live + Same Day ratings metric.
All other summer series — including returning shows — across CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC and The CW have retained at least 50% of their “live” premiere ratings to-date.
To be fair to Fox and the Peach Pit gang, “BH90210” was by far the highest-rated new scripted series of the summer, more than doubling its closest competition (ABC’s “Grand Hotel,” which opened with a 0.7 rating).
Plus, Fox doesn’t even report Live + Same Day ratings anymore, preferring to focus on delayed-viewing metrics instead. Unfortunately for Fox, we (and the rest of the industry) still do.
Anyway, some unscripted series — “Bring the Funny,” “Songland,” “Holey Moley,” “Press Your Luck,” “Card Sharks” and “Spin the Wheel” — opened with higher “live” ratings than “Grand Hotel,” but lower numbers than “BH90210.”
With 3.9 million “live” premiere viewers, the “90210” meta sequel was the second-most watched new scripted series debut of Summer 2019. In unscripted fare, “Bring the Funny,” “Songland,” “Holey Moley,” “Press Your Luck” and “Card Sharks” started out with more overall eyeballs than the subject of this story.
Counting a week’s worth of delayed viewing, the fourth episode of “BH90210” (the newest one we have Live + 7 Day data for) has retained 61% of its premiere episode’s rating (a 1.4 vs. a 2.3). By that metric, “BH90210” is NOT the worst summer decline on broadcast.
The “BH90210” Season 1 finale airs Wednesday at 9/8c on Fox. The network has not yet made any decision on a potential Season 2, and this article probably won’t help matters.