Survivor ratings: Ghost Island episode 7 rebounds to close pre-merge

Although the Survivor ratings for Ghost Island episode 7 close out the same as last week, the gap between them and the best is narrowed this week.

For the first few weeks of Survivor Ghost Island, nobody could touch CBS’ perpetual Wednesday night leader in the ratings. When Empire returned from its winter hiatus, however, the ratings lead shifted back to FOX, but just for that episode. While the song remains the same for a second straight week, there is a much closer race at stake.

TVByTheNumbers has released the final Wednesday night Nielsen television ratings for live + same-day viewership, with Survivor Ghost Island episode 7, “Risk It for the Biscuit,” earning 1.7/7 ratings and share, respectively. That’s just a decimal point behind Empire at 8 p.m. ET, which earned a 1.8/7 split between ratings of all Nielsen boxes and the share of actively watching television at the time.

Of course, what remains evident is just how much of a viewership lead Survivor ratings produce on Wednesday nights. After dipping to 8.15 million viewers last week, this week’s episode was watched by 8.42 million people on Wednesday night. That’s the second-most viewers the show has received all season, leading all programming across the broadcast networks by a significant margin. Criminal Minds received 5.9 million viewers for second place, being bested by 2.5 million viewers.

You have to give it up to the editors for making Survivor Ghost Island more entertaining than it could have been. For the majority of the season, original Malolo was getting picked one by one, with viewers getting a better perspective of them as characters on the way out the door. Modern seasons have often focused on the big picture of the season only, whereas we got some episodes that felt a bit old school in nature.

Next: Survivor: Ranking all 35 seasons

Next week’s episode is the merge, but it’s only a one-hour affair this year. Perhaps the Chris vs. Dom story will carry the Survivor ratings back on top.