There’s still life in those foul-mouth kids from “South Park” (sorry, “Tegridy Farms”), as the 23rd season of the long-running animated comedy handed Comedy Central the top cable comedy telecast of the year in the advertiser-coveted adults 18-49 demographic.
The premiere episode — which introduced a new intro that swapped out “South Park” for “Tegridy” — notched a 1.3 rating among adults 18-49, when adding in three days of delayed viewing on DVR and on-demand, according to Nielsen.
While that was good enough to give the network the top telecast among all cable comedies this year, it was down 24% from last year’s season opener (1.7 rating), but in line with the season average. However, if we’re only looking at Live+Same Day results (counting only those people who watched the night of the premiere), Season 23 actually improved from last year with a 0.9 rating in the demo, compared to 0.7 for last season’s opener.
“South Park” taking the top cable comedy spot is par for the course. The series has held that spot for the last six years.
Among total viewers, the Sept. 25 episode drew 1.4 million, which was down 26% from last year (1.9 million).
Earlier this month, Comedy Central agreed to a new deal with Matt Stone and Trey Parker to keep the longrunning cartoon for an additional three seasons. That will take “South Park” through Season 26 and 327 episodes.
Following “South Park” was the debut of Jimmy Kimmel’s “Crank Yankers” revival, which notched a 0.57 rating in the demo in Live+3 metrics. That marked the network’s best debut in the young adults demo since 2016 (“Legends of Chamberlain Heights”), and the best primetime launch since 2014 among adults 25-54 (0.6) and men 25-54 (0.8).