Spotted Ratings, Premiere Thursday 9/24/15

WHAT MATTERS:

• FINALS UPDATE: Scandal (3.3) and Heroes Reborn (2.0) each adjusted up, while Thursday Night Football went up to 6.0 to tie last year's game on premiere Thursday. This put the big four a combined 8% behind last year's opening Thursday.

• ABC had a triumphant return for its three-hour TGIT lineup, with Grey's Anatomy (2.8) and Scandal (3.2) mounting massive rallies from their spring ratings. Considering how questionable Scandal's ratings were looking at times last spring, both shows can be marked down as big wins. Getting to near league-average drops from last year's huge premieres is a huge achievement.
• I'm not gonna use the word "loser" so I will just say that if there was a "less-winner" in TGIT, it was sophomore How to Get Away with Murder (2.6), which seemed to illustrate that the limited series sophomore slump is alive and well, even with shows this strong. Without question, this is still a very strong number, but it still marks a new series low for a series that hadn't showed as much sign of late-season leakage as the other two (especially Scandal).

• The only other network making an effort with entertainment programming was NBC, where Heroes Reborn (1.9) was very much on the map for its two-hour premiere. If it can hold anywhere close to this, NBC could be on the way to big improvements vs. last year's The Biggest Loser and comedies. However, newbie The Player (1.2) shed nearly 40% of the Heroes demo, and it looks pretty hopeless here unless the show turns out to be a far better fit with The Blacklist. 

• CBS was in football mode and Fox repeated the Scream Queens premiere. The big four were preliminarily 20% behind last year's opening Thursday, but that number is going to be a lot better after finals since this version compares the CBS Thursday Night Football prelims with last year's combined CBS/NFLN finals.

FULL TABLE (FINALS):

	Ratings		Year-to-Year
	Viewers	A18-49	y2y	Ty2y
Grey's Anatomy	9.55	2.8	-10%	-10%
Scandal	10.25	3.3	-13%	-16%
How To Get Away With Murder	8.38	2.6	-32%	-32%
			ABC:	-20%
Thursday Night Football Kickoff	7.55	2.2	+0%	-4%
Thursday Night Football	16.88	6.0	+0%	-3%
			CBS:	-3%
Heroes Reborn	6.09	2.0	n/a	+51%
The Player	4.68	1.2	n/a	-14%
			NBC:	+28%
Scream Queens (R)	2.01	0.7		-36%
			Fox:	-36%
The Flash (R)	1.12	0.4		+100%
Arrow (R)	0.78	0.3		+50%
			CW:	+75%
			Big4:	-8%
			Big5:	-6%

The full table can be sorted by clicking any of the category names at the top. Hover over 'y2y' and 'Ty2y' numbers for more information on the previous episode being compared.