The seventh season of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” kicks off Thursday and while fans of the Andy Samberg and Andre Braugher-led comedy wait for that hour-long premiere to air, TheWrap’s got some “toit” exclusive ratings news for them: Your favorite show was NBC’s most popular series on digital platforms last season, according to the broadcast network.
“‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ is the No. 1 NBCUniversal show on Hulu and, when in originals last year, was a top show overall as well,” NBC and Hulu told TheWrap in a joint statement.
The sixth season of the Dan Goor and Mike Schur-created comedy, which aired between January and May last year, wasn’t a strong performer for NBC in Nielsen’s Live + Same Day ratings, averaging a 1.1 rating in the advertiser-coveted adults 18-49 demographic and 3.1 million total viewers over 18 episodes. (Though it did do better for NBC than it was doing for Fox.)
But according to data provided to TheWrap exclusively by NBC, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” gets a huge lift in its ratings thanks to viewership on digital platforms like Hulu and the NBC app — and given time.
When counting 35 days’ worth of delayed viewing after each Season 6 episode aired, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s” average audience in the 18-49 range was four times its live-plus-same-day rating in that key demo, according to NBC, with 58% of that audience coming from digital platforms.
In that same Live + 35 Day window, NBC says “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” is its No. 2 comedy among the 18-49 crowd, with the top being Schur’s now-ended “The Good Place.”
“It’s becoming more important for us to get people to understand how different viewing is from the way it’s traditionally written about,” NBCUniversal chief research officer Jeff Bader told TheWrap. “For ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ – like ‘Superstore,’ ‘The Good Place’ and ‘This Is Us’ — if you look at a live number, it’s going to not be indicative of its ultimate performance. ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ is sort of fun because you wouldn’t think it’s one of NBC’s highest-rated shows, but it is.”
In case you forgot, NBC has already given “Brooklyn” an early Season 8 renewal — and now you know why.
But the 99th precinct isn’t just popular with digital viewers, but younger, male viewers, too. Among men 18-34, the sixth season of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” averaged a 3.2 rating, making it NBC’s No. 1 show in that demo. And 72% of that audience came from digital platforms like Hulu and the NBC app.
Readers can see the digital lifts that Season 6’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” episodes have received to date in both the 18-49 demo and total viewers via the charts below, which are provided by NBC and based on data through Jan. 16.
(The digital bump is the orange part noted as “Non-Nielsen.”)
The seventh season of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” premieres with back-to-back episodes Thursday at 8/7c on NBC.