‘Limitless’, ‘Scream Queens’ & ‘Muppets’ Top Premiere Tuesday L3 Ratings Gains

It was good news for all new Tuesday scripted series, with CBS’ Limitless, Fox’s Scream Queens and ABC’s The Muppets logging the biggest Live+3 ratings lifts on Premiere Tuesday.

Limitless and Scream Queens tied for the biggest absolute 18-49 gain, 1.0 rating, rising to a 2.9 and a 2.7, respectively. ABC’s The Muppets was close behind, tying Tuesday’s most watched series, veteran NCIS, with a 0.9 rating lift to a 3.8. The Muppets was the top scripted program of the night in the demo and ranks as the second highest rated new series debut behind NBC’s Blindspot. In total viewers, Limitless added more viewers than any other program last Tuesday, 3.5 million. Its viewership grew to 13.4 million.

Scream Queens, which started from the lowest starting point among the newcomers, a 1.7 rating in 18-49, had the biggest percentage lift, +59%. The VOD portion for the younger-skewing show’s L3 gain was big, 0.42 rating, up from the 0.25 for Blindspot, which already was one of the biggest ever on NBC.

Additionally, according to multi-platform data provided by Fox, Ryan Murphy’s new horror-comedy has drawn an audience of 1 million on streaming platforms Fox Now and Hulu – the largest three-day non-linear lift ever for a Fox premiere. That brought the L3 audience for the Scream Queens premiere to 7.3 million, up +80% from Live+same day’s 4 million. (Another 2 million watched the Thursday encore telecast). The network also estimates that the total social activity over the first three days grew from 1 million to 2.3 million.

“Scream Queens is a model for contemporary viewership. Today’s numbers clearly demonstrate that not only is the show being watched heavily across multiple platforms, but those viewers watch it with urgency and want to be part of the global conversation before the next episode airs,” said Dana Walden and Gary Newman, Chairmen and CEOs, Fox Television Group.

Elsewhere, ABC sophomore Fresh Off the Boat rose +0.6 rating points after 3 days of TV playback to a 2.5 demo rating, matching the comedy’s biggest-ever Tuesday lift.

Here is list of the 18-49 lifts for the programs on Premiere Tuesday: