The Kathy Bates-led legal drama scores the network’s best series premiere audience in five years, excluding post-Super Bowl debuts.

 

Skye P. Marshall, Kathy Bates and Jason Ritter in ‘Matlock.’ Courtesy of CBS

CBS’ update on Matlock brought in a strong audience for its premiere Sunday night.

The legal drama starring Kathy Bates — which shares a name and basic premise with the 1980s-90s series starring Andy Griffith, but not much else — brought in 7.73 million viewers for its debut. Excluding shows that debuted after the Super Bowl, that’s the largest series premiere audience for a CBS show in more than five years (since The Code followed an NCIS episode in April 2019).

The 7.73 million viewers also would have ranked in the top five among CBS’ same-day audiences for scripted shows last season (again, not including the post-Super Bowl premiere for Tracker).

Matlock turned in the biggest same-day audience among the handful of network shows that had season or series premieres last week (the Nielsen-measured 2024-25 season officially begins Monday). Among the others, ABC’s Dancing With the Stars drew the biggest total audience (4.97 million viewers), a little ahead of Survivor (4.72 million) on CBS. Fox’s drama Rescue: Hi-Surf — which followed an NFL doubleheader Sunday — premiered to 4.7 million viewers, based on Nielsen’s fast national ratings (and might adjust some in the final numbers, which will arrive Tuesday).

High Potential followed DWTS on ABC Sept. 17 with 3.59 million viewers, a good bit ahead of The Good Doctor’s same-day average (2.48 million) in the 10 p.m. Tuesday spot last spring.

Rescue: Hi-Surf led last week’s premieres with a 1.1 rating among adults 18-49 — equivalent to about 1.48 million viewers in that age range — with an assist from the NFL lead-in; that’s the best demographic rating for a fall drama series premiere since CBS’ God Friended Me in 2018. DWTS and Survivor each posted a 0.73 (about 980,000 viewers) in the key ad-sales demographic.

Also over the weekend, The CW’s first broadcast of NASCAR’s Xfinity Series averaged 906,000 viewers Friday night, the network’s best showing in eight months.

Elsewhere, The Penguin pulled in 5.3 million cross-platform viewers over its first four days on HBO and Max. That’s ahead of the most recent season premieres for both Succession (4.9 million viewers) and The White Lotus (4.1 million) over the same length of time — though both of them premiered on a Sunday night, and The Penguin debuted on a Thursday.