An excellent season of David vs. Goliath hasn’t led to a Survivor ratings boom like in the early days, but CBS will take their key demo leads nonetheless.
With FOX’s primary Wednesday night drama losing its luster, the lodestar that is Survivor has been steering the ship of CBS in the ratings battle for quite some time. Sure, the show is never likely going to top 10 million viewers every episode ever again, but the network will take its live + same-day wins wherever they can take them.
TV By The Numbers has posted the final report for Wednesday night Survivor ratings, showing that David vs. Goliath episode 3, “I Am Goliath Strong,” received a 1.6 rating and 7 share in the 18-49 key adults demographic. That’s enough to win out over the rest of the night and tying only with Empire in the same timeslot (albeit with 2.5 million fewer viewers).
It appears as though 7.65 million people were tuned into Jeremy Crawford and Natalie Cole going at it up and down the Goliath tribe, even though Jeremy would rather paint a different picture; one where he doesn’t look as foolish as he does both in the episode and when trying to explain himself in the episode. Still, half a million more people in total were watching Chicago Med in the timeslot, even though it had a worse rating and share.
Survivor ratings are a bit of a different beast compared to scripted series’ surrounding it on Wednesday night. There are only 13-14 weeks of television that this story needs to take place over before David vs. Goliath is abandoned for the next season. As such, there might be a bit of a boost for the premiere, the finale and the Thanksgiving double episode special; something that helps in a shortened season.
No matter how you slice it, Survivor is here to stay for a long time. I’d hope so; they’re letting in Canadians on the show to compete!