Ratings: Shifting Gears Sharply Improves Time Slot, Nearly Ties Chicago Med for Wednesday’s Best Audience
In the latest TV show ratings, ABC‘s Shifting Gears debut and Abbott Elementary midseason premiere easily led Wednesday in the demo, while NBC’s Chicago Med just barey edged out Shifting Gears for the night’s largest audience
ABC | Shifting Gears debuted to 6.1 million total viewers and a 0.7 demo rating, which marks the time slot’s strongest numbers in… well, at least a long while. (My abacus is in my other coat.) But it bested Golden Bachelorette as well as recent seasons of time slot predecessors The Conners and The Goldbergs. TVLine readers gave the Tim Allen/Kat Dennings comedy an average grade of “B-,” with 77% planning to stay tuned.
Now with an actually compatible lead-in, Abbott Elementary (3.8 mil/0.7) easily put up its best numbers of the season. Celebrity Jeopardy! retained just 3 mil/0.4, followed by What Would You Do?‘s 1.9 mil/0.3.
NBC | Among #OneChicago‘s midseason premieres, Chicago Med (6.2 mil/0.5) and Chicago P.D. (4.7 mil/0.4) both returned up, while Chicago Fire (5.8 mil/0.4) was steady
FOX | Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test‘s double-episode Season 3 premiere (averaging 1.9 mil and a 0.3) was up a tick versus its Season 2 averages.
CBS | Raid the Cage (2.5 mil/0.3) opened Season 2 steady versus its Season 1 averages.
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The Live+Same Day numbers reported in TVLine’s daily-ish ratings column do NOT reflect a television program’s overall performance, given the increased use of delayed playback via DVR and streaming platforms, plus out-of-home viewing. These numbers instead aim to simply illustrate trends or superlatives. Steve Harvey is not a judge or lawyer and merely offers an alternative forum of dispute resolution
Shifting Gears could got higher ratings if it wasn’t for ABC showing the California fires in the Los Angeles area.
apparently it finally worked but why ABC avoid Abbott 8 PM so much?
Congrats to Abbott Elementary those are the ratings it deserves not those low ratings it was getting behind of the bachelorette. Wish ABC had let it lead the night it could have gotten even higher demo.
Congrats to Shifting Gears too those are high numbers but it’s just another Home Improvement, Last Man Standing, same actor, different shows, same theme and feel. He dosent have acting rage.
Honestly who cares if it’s more of the same if it’s works, we need all the good sitcoms we can get.
I couldn’t get into last man’s standing but I like kat dennings (even if her acting isn’t always the best) I enjoyed shifting gears enough to keep watching.
I watched just for Kat!
Exactly! Everything he plays in is the same. It’s honestly played out at this point.
Would it have gotten a better demo?
That Celebrity Jeopardy premiere was weak. Painful to watch. ABC should focus on some comedies and clever scripted dramas. Shifting Gears is a step in the right direction.. I am old enough to remember popular action shows, prestige dramas, and funny sitcoms on the Alphabet. Broadcast TV is available to everyone. Why is it treated as a junk pile?
I loved “Last Man Standing” (when it was on ABC), but “Shifting Gears” was absolutely terrible. Embarrassingly bad. The writing, acting, that obnoxious laugh track. And Allen and Dennings have zero chemistry. I’ll watch 1-2 more episodes and if it doesn’t improve drastically, I’m out. F rating from me.
Please look it up it is not a laugh track it’s shot before a live studio audience so they have a sign like a late night show applause/laugh
It was definitely a laugh track.
I don’t know how anyone can dispute it wasn’t a laugh track. Sure, there was a studio audience. But they weren’t laughing like that. It’s so obviously fake.
It still boggles my mind why ABC didn’t put Abbot on at 8, and have The Golden Bachelorette at 8:30.
I hated it. Who wants to listen to people arguing for 30 minutes.
And about nothing. I read a comment online that said the show should be called “Angry Old Man”.
I really wanted to like this show, but that canned laughter is way too much! It’s extremely distracting, and totally unnecessary.
It’s not canned laughter. The applause when Tim Allen and Kat Dennings popped up on screen, would not have happened if it was canned laughter, it was a live audience.
Skip, yes, it was filmed before a studio audience. But that was 1000% a laugh track.
Ratings might dip for next week’s episode of Shifting Gears. I tuned in out of curiosity, but I found the pilot to be underwhelming. Hopefully, it improves, but for now, it’s a pass from me.
On a positive note, I’m glad to see Abbott performing much better compared to the start of the fall. Airing a family show at 9:30 PM was a strange choice back then..
I love multi cameras exactly because of the laughter which makes it lively and fun, if you do not like it, please watch single cameras and leave us with the multicams. This is a huge success for Tim as always and it is clear the ratings would have gone even to ten million, which was the usual number for his sitcoms, if the situation with the fires did not give the sitcom a bad timing, sadly.
His sitcoms are for the intelligent audience because they aim to educate and teach us to live happily by accepting compromise and differences, we do not have to agree on everything in order to love each other and live together, that was the message of LMS and is not as well of Shifting Gears. So many heartfelt emotions and also good laughs in the first episode.
What show did YOU watch!? There was not a single heartfelt emotion and zero laughs in this first episode. I would also argue that while “Home Improvement” and “Last Man Standing” were fun (and funny) shows, they weren’t aimed at Mensa members.
Abbott held the leas in demo, which is most important. However, I would have expected and higher overall viewer retention. 6.1M to 3.8M feels like a significant drop.
All the old people who loved Tim Allen 30 years ago flipped the channel after his show was over
it’s a nice start but it’s the first episode only… calm down lol. but it’s too bad ABC didn’t have a strategy for a comedy lineup. at least 2 is better than 1. 4 would make more sense.
The first episode was not engaging, but that is usually reserved for set up. Still, I did expect more. Kat is funny, but she is,as is Tim Allen, the same in every show. I am happy to see Sean working (my Sports Connection buddy). I hope it gets better for his sake. I can project where this cliche is going anyway. Kat and Sean will play cat and Sean, I mean mouse for as many seasons as they can drag it out and then eventually hook up. The kids father will come back to shake things up. Sitcom 101.
Sorry Seann with 2 n’s
We just watched the first episode tonight. It will be interesting to see how it develops…
Tim Allen is awesome… the rest of the cast might take some time to find their characters…