NBC’s faith-based original movie “Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors” opened to good numbers on Thursday, skewing older as expected but beating its broadcast competition in key demos while drawing nearly 13 million total viewers — the biggest crowd for an original movie on the Big Four since 2012.
“Coat of Many Colors,” introduced and narrated by Parton and based on her life growing up in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains in the 1950s, averaged a 1.8 rating/6 share in adults 18-49 and 12.8 million viewers overall from 9 to 11. This is the network’s largest overall audience in the time period (excluding sports) since its telecast of “The Sound of Music Live” in December 2013.
And excluding all live programming, NBC hasn’t drawn a larger Thursday 9-11 p.m. audience since the series finale of “ER” in April 2009. Among all original movies on the Big Four networks, last night’s audience was the largest since CBS’ “Jesse Stone: Benefit of Doubt” (12.93 million), and there’s a chance “Coat” can surpass the Tom Selleck movie in the finals.
While last week’s “The Wiz Live!” drew better in key demos — by 89% in 18-49 (3.4 vs. 1.8) and by 48% in 25-54 (4.0 vs. 2.7) — “Coat of Many Colors” drew a larger overall audience by more than 1 million (12.8 million vs. 11.5 million). The movie, starring “Young and the Restless” actress Alyvia Alyn Lind as a 9-year-old Parton, peaked with 13.2 million viewers for its final half-hour.
