The War of 18-49, Suits

A Solid USA Rookie Becomes Elite In Season Two

Suits came around on the tail end of that roughly five-year period when USA was churning out new drama launches with mid-1 ratings like clockwork. Its lead-in Burn Notice opened the summer 2011 run with 5.167 million viewers and a 1.7 demo, and Suits held onto almost all of it with 4.636 million and a 1.6. Both shows plummeted the next week, to a respective 1.3/1.2, but they bounced back a bit from there and remained in a very close ratings lock-step. Suits even built from Burn Notice on a couple occasions, perhaps most impressively on 7/28/11 when it had a 1.5 to Burn's 1.4. Suits' first season fell pretty much in the middle of a tightly-packed upper tier of USA dramas, slightly behind Royal Pains (1.46) and Burn Notice (1.38) and just ahead of Necessary Roughness (1.23), Covert Affairs (1.23) and White Collar (1.22).

In season two, Suits started with a modest 1.1 demo but grew the next two weeks and only dropped as low as 1.1 once more the whole summer. It seemed to have some real heat at season's end; its 1.4 and 1.5 to wrap up the summer were both two tenths ahead of their respective Burn Notice lead-ins. This strong hold put the show's average just a hundredth behind Burn Notice. And it stacked up way ahead of the other USA dramas, pretty much all of which began taking huge same-day declines in 2012. (The next-highest USA dramas behind the Thursday duo were Royal Pains and White Collar at around 1.0.)

Big Drops, But Not As Big As Its Peers

Beyond season two, Suits hasn't really been able to transcend the general downward trend of the other programming on its network. It shed roughly 20% each of the next two summers, and more than that for the regular season runs. That kept it in about the same relative position in 2013, again narrowly behind Burn Notice in its final season and with about the same-sized lead over Royal Pains (-21%) and Covert Affairs (-20%).

It was dropping just 23% in 2014 that saw the show make another pronounced move compared to the other USA dramas, as Royal Pains and Graceland were both down over a third and Covert Affairs almost half. With Burn Notice gone, that put Suits almost 50% ahead of the next-biggest USA drama. As it's continued to take fairly reasonable-sized drops, it was not truly overshadowed by one of its USA peers until 2017, when its own lead-out The Sinner built on it significantly.

Adults 18-49 info by season:

Seas	Year	Slot	Avg	y2y	Lo	Hi	Results	Grade
1	Summer 2011	Thursday 10:00	1.32		1.1	1.6	detail
2	Summer 2012		Thursday 10:00	1.23	-7%	1.1	1.5		detail
	2		Winter 2013	Thursday 10:00	1.07		1.0			1.2	detail
3	Summer 2013	Tuesday 10:00	1.00	-19%	0.9	1.2	detail
	3	2014	Thursday 9:00	0.71	-34%	0.7			0.8	detail
4	Summer 2014	Wednesday 9:00	0.77	-23%	0.7	0.9	detail
	4	Winter 2015	Wednesday 10:00	0.52	-27%	0.4			0.6	detail
5	Summer 2015	Wednesday 9:00	0.61	-21%	0.6	0.7	detail	B+
	5	Winter 2016	Wednesday 10:00	0.50	-3%	0.5			0.5	detail	B+
6	Summer 2016	Wednesday 9:00	0.48	-21%	0.4	0.5	detail	C
	6	Winter 2017	Wednesday 10:00	0.32	-36%	0.3			0.3	detail	C
7	Summer 2017	Wednesday 9:00	0.38	-21%	0.3	0.5	detail
	7	Spring 2018	Wed 9:00, Wed 9:30	0.27	-17%	0.2			0.3	detail
8	Summer 2018	Wednesday 9:00	0.26	-30%	0.2	0.3	detail
	8	Winter 2019	Wednesday 10:00	0.20	-25%	0.2			0.3	detail
9	Summer 2019	Wednesday 9:00	0.20	-22%	0.2	0.2	detail

Historical-adjusted ratings by season:

Seas	Year	A18-49+	Label	Now19	y2y	Lo	Hi	Premiere	Finale
1	Summer 2011	52				43	63	63	43
2	Summer 2012	52				46	62	46	62
	2	Winter 2013	51				46	59	59	48
3	Summer 2013	47				42	57	50	48
	3	2014	38				35	40	40	35
4	Summer 2014	41				37	48	40	42
	4	Winter 2015	31				27	33	33	33
5	Summer 2015	36				33	40	36	37
	5	Winter 2016	34				32	37	37	36
6	Summer 2016	33				27	37	36	35
	6	Winter 2017	26				25	28	25	26
7	Summer 2017	31				27	38	29	38
	7	Spring 2018	24				22	27	27	24
8	Summer 2018	24				20	29	26	24
	8	Winter 2019	21				18	27	27	19
9	Summer 2019	22				16	24	22	20
AVERAGE:		AVERAGE:	35

The War of 18-49 chronicles the ratings history of veteran primetime series. For more, see the Index.