‘Quantico’ Ratings: Keeps Up Premiere Week Pace In Week 2, ‘CSI: Cyber’ Falls

Snapshot: New series Week 2 retention – ABC’s Quantico (1.9, 100%), Blood & Oil (1.2, 86%); CSI: Cyber Season 2 premiere (1.0) down 44%; Sunday Night Football marks fifth consecutive game to grow year-to-year for the first time.

ABC’s Quantico (1.9 in 18-49, 6.9 million) has sealed a back order with an impressive 100% hold of its premiere demo rating. The network already was high on the conspiracy thriller, giving it encore airings in the Tuesday 10 PM slot for the first two weeks. Quantico, starring Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra, got off to a solid ratings start last Sunday, followed by a very strong DVR results — the opener added a 1.18 rating in 18-49, second only to NBC’s Blindspot among new fall series, for a 62% lift, second only to Fox’s Scream Queens (65%). In total viewers, Quantico added 4 million viewers for the biggest percentage gain among all programs — new and returning — during premiere week, 56%, bringing Quantico‘s premiere viewership for the three days after the debut to almost 16 million, including the encore telecast on Tuesday.

Quantico has joined CBS’ Limitless as the only new scripted series this fall not to drop in Week 2. It’s been an unusually strong fall for 10 PM dramas with three freshmen assured full-season pickups: Quantico, Limitless and Blindspot.

Quantico is now ABC’s highest-rated and most-watched program on Sunday, followed by veteran Once Upon A Time (1.8), which also held steady from last week after a steep year-to-year decline for the season premiere. New soap Blood & Oil (1.2) has emerged as the weak link in the lineup at 9 PM though it fell modestly from the premiere, by 14%.

NBC again dominated the night with Sunday Night Football. The New Orleans Saints’ overtime win against the Dallas Cowboys averaged a 14.8 rating in the metered-market households from 8:30-11:45 PM ET. That was up 7% from last week’s game and up 8% from the SNF Week 4 matchup last fall.

NBC notes that it’s the first time in the 10-season history of SNF on NBC that each of the first five games has grown versus the prior year.

With CBS and Fox alternating in NFL Sunday afternoon coverage, week-to-week comparisons for their shows are pretty meaningless. Fox’s comedy lineup, which had a football lead-in this week, was of course up from last Sunday when CBS had the games, with the gains progressively fading from 8-10 PM. (The Simpsons, 2.6, +73%; Brooklyn Nine-Nine, 1.9, +27%; Family Guy, 1.7, +13%; Last Man On Earth, 1.5, +7%)

Meanwhile, CBS’ 60 Minutes (1.5) suffered a 48% ratings decline from last Sunday when it had a football lead-in and Donald Trump as a subject. And that is with some football inflation as CBS’ primetime was delayed by 26 minutes in some markets for NFL coverage. The season premieres of Madame Secretary (1.5) and The Good Wife (1.2) both were down from last fall (25% and 20%, respectively) when CBS’ Sunday openers followed a football-boosted 60 Minutes. Vs. last season’s finales, Madam Secretary was up +50%, The Good Wife was even.

Besides a soft lead-in from Good Wife, there was no mitigating factor for the low Season 2 opener of CSI: Cyber (1.0), which started its second season in the new time slot down 44% from its series debut on Wednesday and below any episode from Season 1. The premiere re-introduced Ted Danson’s character from the mothership CSI series.