TV Ratings: ‘Young Sheldon’ Opens Final Season With Multi-Year High

The final season of Young Sheldon began with the CBS show’s largest audience in several years Thursday, and Ghosts had its best first-night audience ever.

The two comedies were the runaway leaders in primetime, continuing a strong premiere week for CBS. After an aggressive promo campaign during the Super Bowl (which had the largest TV audience in American history), a number of the network’s shows have debuted to improved viewer numbers compared to their fall 2022 premieres.

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Young Sheldon drew 7.99 million viewers for its season premiere — the largest same-day audience for the show since April 2020, a span of almost four years. It’s also the most watched primetime show of the week so far. In the key ad-sales demographic of adults 18-49, its 0.63 rating was the show’s best since last March, a span of eight episodes.

Ghosts delivered 7.05 million viewers for its third season premiere, the highest same-day tally ever for the show. Its 0.67 rating in the 18-49 demo was the second highest to date for an initial airing, just .01 behind a January 2022 episode. Following the two comedies, So Help Me Todd began its second season with 4.91 million viewers, up slightly from its series premiere (4.82 million) in fall 2022. A rerun of the Tracker premiere snagged 3.51 million viewers at 10 p.m.

Coming out of the Super Bowl, CBS has had four shows top 7 million same-day viewers for its premiere week, with FBI (7.7 million) and NCIS (7.32 million) joining the two comedies. And with NBC’s Chicago and Law & Order franchises taking the week off, CBS has recorded the top 11 primetime audiences of the week so far.

Young Sheldon has also been one of the most watched streaming shows in the past few months after it was added to Netflix in late November (it also streams on Max), which might have had some halo effect on its premiere as well.

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