‘The Rookie’ Season 6 Debuts to 29% Ratings Growth Across ABC, Hulu

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Last week’s back-to-back premieres of “Will Trent, “The Rookie” and “The Good Doctor” scored impressive ratings growth for ABC’s Tuesday drama lineup.

The Season 2 launch of “Will Trent” led the Feb. 20 premieres at 8 p.m. and scored 7.68 million viewers and a 0.80 rating in the key broadcast demo among adults 18-49 across ABC, Hulu and digital platforms, according to Nielsen live-plus-three-day viewing figures and internal data.

In addition to scoring the show’s strongest multiplatform viewership to date, viewership for the premiere grew 5% from the series debut, which brought in 7.34 million viewers, and was up 18% from its freshman season average of 6.50 million viewers. After three days of multiplatform viewing, total viewership for “Will Trent” saw a 61% uptick from its initial live-plus-same-day viewership of 4.77, and grew 142% from its initial rating of 0.33.

After debuting its first season in the 10 p.m. slot, “Will Trent” was moved up to lead primetime, and is now followed at 9 p.m. by “The Rookie,” whose Season 6 premiere ranked as the show’s strongest multiplatform premiere since its Season 2 launch in September 2019.

Led by Nathan Fillion and Melissa O’Neil, “The Rookie” debuted to a total multiplatform three-day viewership of 7.93 million — up 9% from its last season premiere — and scored a rating of 1.52 in the key demo — up 29% from the last season premiere.

Shifting “Will Trent” up to 8 p.m. marks a commitment to the Ramon Rodriguez-led series following its strong Season 1 debut, according to Ari Goldman, ABC’s SVP of content strategy and scheduling.

“We felt we could build a night around that engine at 9 p.m. and give the eight o’clock opportunity for ‘Will Trent’ to strengthen the night as a whole,” Goldman told TheWrap.

“Ramon is amazing and as you look at the cast as a whole, we were finding that you could treat this as a true ensemble and get so many stories from our characters,” added Simran Sethi, ABC and Freeform EVP of programming and content strategy. “We really believe in this show and the team behind it creatively and wanted to invest in it.”

The investment into “Will Trent” can also be seen in rebroadcasts on ABC, with its Season 2 premiere scoring an audience of 9.20 million total viewers when combining its Feb. 20 launch and subsequent Feb. 22 rebroadcast.

Not only did moving up “Will Trent” score a success for ABC as the premiere episode scored the show’s most-watched linear telecast with 6.66 million total viewers, the show continued to engage streaming audiences as well, with “Will Trent” hitting a series viewership high on Hulu the day after its Season 2 premiere.

“We want to create the best possible live experience for the ABC linear viewer, and then we have the opportunity to engage even more viewers on Hulu, and that’s a win win for us and our audience,” Goldman said.

Streaming viewership for the launch of “The Rookie” also posted impressive gains, with the Season 6 premiere ranking as the series’ most-streamed episode ever on Hulu within its first three days of viewing.

The final season of “The Good Doctor” followed “The Rookie” in the 10 p.m. timeslot, and scored a 5.74 million total viewers and 0.79 rating in the key demo, per live-plus-three-day multiplatform data.

The three-day multiplatform viewership nearly doubled the premiere’s initial live-plus-same-day viewership 2.86 million, with its initial rating of 0.26 shooting up by 204%.

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