Another soft showing by the concluding second part of CBS original movie “The Dovekeepers” seemed to help the competition, with ABC’s “Black-ish” the biggest opportunist as it posted its best demo score since the fall.
According to preliminary national estimates from Nielsen, ABC won Wednesday in key demos thanks to its comedy block of “The Middle” (1.7 rating/7 share in adults 18-49, 7.6 million viewers overall), “The Goldbergs” (1.9/7 in 18-49, 7.2 million viewers overall), “Modern Family” (2.9/10 in 18-49, 9.3 million viewers overall) and “Black-ish” (2.4/8 in 18-49, 7.4 million viewers overall) — all of which incorporated April Fool’s Day jokes into their storylines. For its two-hour block, the laffers won in all under-55 categories, including a season high in teens 12-17 (1.7/9).
“Middle,” which should round up to a 1.8 in the nationals, and “The Goldbergs” were both down a little from last week and placed second in their 8 o’clock hour. “Modern Family” was again the night’s top show in 18-49 and 25-54 (3.8/11) and up a tick from last week but still on the low side, while “Black-ish” was up 0.2 or 0.3 vs. last week depending on whether it holds at its prelim score in the nationals. The 2.4 rating is the best for the first-year comedy since Nov. 19. (It did hit a 2.3 once in 2015, but that was on a night when “Modern Family” logged a 3.4).
At 10 p.m., “Nashville” produced modest numbers as it returned to originals (1.3/4 in 18-49, 5.1 million viewers overall). Despite a lead-in that was about 50% larger than last year (when “Mixology” did a 1.6 at 9:30), the country music-themed soap was down 13% (or 0.2) from last year’s 1.5.
