Primetime Ratings: ‘Little Mermaid Live’ Plays Well For ABC

The Wonderful World of Disney Presents The Little Mermaid Live! paced ABC to a big win in Tuesday prime ratings. ABC did a 2.0 in viewers 18-49, per the Nielsen overnights, and a 9 share. In second was NBC at 1.1/5.

ABC’s two-hour special, a mix of live performance and clips from the Little Mermaid movie, rated a 2.6. Queen Latifah, Auli’i Cravalho, Shaggy and John Stamos were in the cast. Emergence followed, up 17% to 0.7.

In terms of other live musicals, Fox had Rent at 1.4 in January, and A Christmas Story at 1.5 late in 2017. Fox’s Grease Live scored a notable 4.3 in 2016.

NBC had The Voice up 8% at 1.3 and This Is Us down 7% at 1.3, then New Amsterdam down 13% for a 0.7.

CBS got a 0.8/4 and Fox a 0.7/3. CBS had NCIS down 9% for a 1.0 and FBI at 0.8, then NCIS: New Orleans at 0.7. The latter two were flat.

Fox had The Resident and Empire both at 0.7, Resident flat and Empire down a tenth.

Telemundo did a 0.5/2 and Univision a 0.4/2. Telemundo had Exatlon Estados Unidos at 0.6 and El Final Del Paraiso at 0.5, both up a tenth, and El Senor de los Cielos at a flat 0.4.

Univision had La Rosa de Guadalupe at 0.5 and Cuna de Lobos at 0.4, both flat and El Dragon off 25% for a 0.3.

The CW scored a 0.3/1. The Flash got a 0.4 and Arrow a 0.2, both off a tenth of a point from last week.

Michael Malone

Michael Malone, senior content producer at B+C/Multichannel News, covers network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television. He hosts the podcasts Busted Pilot, about what’s new in television, and Series Business, a chat with the creator of a new program, and writes the column “The Watchman.” He joined B+C in 2005. His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Playboy and New York magazine.