Terri Shields (NBC Hotties), Rachel (NBC-TV) (Channel 4)
Network Season Rankings
1. ICE - 13 wins (65 points)
2. ROD - 5 wins (40 points)
3. NBC - 5 wins (33 points)
RACHEL BECOMES FIRST NITRO SCRIPTED SHOW TO PASS 150 MILLION VIEWERS BEATING ICE & ROD TO THE MILESTONE
We said it was going to be a huge night for NBC and it delivered the goods as Rachel grabbed more than 150 million viewers making it the highest rated and most watched scripted show in NITRO history knocking off ROD's Dallas Cowgirls Undercover which just grabbed 142 million viewers back on Monday night. Rachel becomes the first scripted show to ever get more than 150 million viewers in NITRO as all of the other shows over this benchmark was unscripted programming or live sporting events.
TERRI SHIELDS = RATINGS!
You might be asking what the hell caused Rachel to go from 119 million viewers back on Tuesday all the way up to 152 million viewers?
One name ------>>>>> Terri Shields
Terri Shields announced late last week that she had inked a deal to join the cast of NBC's highest rated series and now NITRO's most watched series a the moment in Rachel. Rachel as we all know is a Friends revival reboot or sequel series to the popular iconic 90s comedy series featuring five the major six actors from the show in Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, and David Schwimmer. Only Matt LeBlanc because he's contracted over at ICE is not apart of the series. Matt LeBlanc will try to rekindle the Friends magic as his character Joey will be apart of Terri's younger sister Strawberry Shields new sitcom DJ Becky starting this Wednesday night on ICE which is a Toronto's Friends franchise spin-off. That series is a reboot as well as the original one failed after Jacqueline MacInnes Wood left ICE back in 2013.
Rachel now has Allison Shields' twin sister Terri in one of the lead roles as she stars in the show as Rachel's daughter Emma's best friend as Rachel will act as a mentor and extra mother figure to Terri's character in the show giving the show a very dynamic and a potential passing of the torch in some respects.
Rachel executive producer Joey Aniston says all credit goes to Terri Shields herself for announcing her role in the show on social media which really got the buzz going all day on Friday lasting into the weekend. The hype for this sixth episode of the series worked so well that it even got her sisters at the rival studios ICE and ROD like Strawberry, Kay, Gillian, Santana, and Nikki all making fun of Terri and people liked the back-and-forth drama on social media all week.
Terri had been trending all week and doing her best job to promote the show during daytime opportunities such as her own variety show and her sister Allison promoted it on Comedy Night Done Right back on Tuesday. The episode was heavily promoted during the WFL games last weekend, Tuesday comedy block this week as well, and Aria last night. Strawberry Shields was featured on Sunday Night Football last week and NBC hyped up Terri's debut a lot knowing Shields family fans would have interest if they didn't already find out about it on social media or the internet the previous couple of days before that night. It might have been NBC's best work in their history when it comes to promotion and they can only hope it works for Scott Clifton's new primetime soap series Liam Spencer.
The question coming into the night was if Rachel could actually score more than 130 million viewers since the previous high was over 120 million viewers and a lot of people thought it would have trouble getting that so getting over 150 million viewers was a number nobody saw coming. It just shows how big of an event this was as it was clear ICE and ROD viewers were watching because ICE turned in one of their lowest performances of the season in primetime with Teen Athlete getting only 46 million viewers and the first half of ROD's Junior Beauty Pageant auditions in the city of Cleveland getting under 80 million viewers before rising back over 90 million viewers during the second hour.
The hype coming the Shields sister wanting to see Terri fail in her debut attributed to this big number. This performance was so big that it beat the combined audience on ICE and ROD in that 8pm hour as ICE and ROD together got 125.47 million viewers and Rachel still beat that number by over 25 million viewers.
Despite her sisters and ICE and ROD fans alike wanting to see Terri fail, the critics loved her performance on Thursday night so we'll see how Alexandra Krosney and Alexandra Daddario both help Molly Ephraim make fun of this performance tomorrow night on Molly in South Philly as Strawberry, Kay, and Gillian will all be making fun of their sister live tomorrow night on Molly in South Philly on ICE but those three ladies better worry about their own performance and how it stacks up in front of critics on Wednesday night for the big DJ Becky series premiere.
The biggest winner last night besides NBC and Terri Shields is going to be her auntie Brooke Shields who seems to have already accomplished her mission of having all of her nieces succeed on multiple NITRO networks which was the goal when she split them all up back in 2013.
We'll see if Rachel can keep this momentum going on Tuesday and Thursday of next week now that Terri is a regular on there. The great news is that her sister and NITRO's most popular actor to-date Allison Shields will do a guest arc on the show during November Sweeps as Ally announced that she will start her run on there either on November 1st or 8th. Their sister Barbara tweeted on Thursday night that the biggest episode in the arc will air right after the WFL Thanksgiving game on November 22nd so it's going to be interested to see how much higher Rachel can get to during the swollen audience period they have here.
Rachel has been a huge success so far outside of NITRO Television as the show has garnered the top spot on NBC's offerings on streaming services as Hulu is a huge winner for hosting Rachel on their streaming service as Rachel is consistently getting over 200 million streams per day.
We know things will get a lot more crowded on Thursdays as the season progresses once Junior Beauty Pageant is deeper into the action with their live shows for ROD and ICE says they have a huge trump card that they're going to pull this January as they're taking their Ls right now.
Highest Rated Scripted Performances on Each Network through 9/27/18
1. Rachel (NBC) - 152.5 million viewers (Thursday September 27, 2018)
2. Dallas Cowgirls Undercover (ROD) - 142.3 million viewers (Monday September 24, 2018)
3. Who Wanted Nichole Dead? (ICE) - 129.5 million viewers (Friday September 7, 2018)
For the rest of NBC's comedy offerings obviously they got a huge boost as My Gay Neighbors reached a series-high and actually beat Who Wanted Nichole Dead's performance on ICE by grabbing 129.71 million viewers holding onto an impressive 85% of Rachel's audience so NBC has to feel really good about that performance for My Gay Neighbors as only 22 million people changed the channel.
Miami's Friends was also impressive keeping NBC over 100 million viewers at 9pm and although some people would be concerned about the massive slippage in between each show these are still great ratings performances. The higher the numbers are the harder it is for lead-outs to keep them. I think what a lot of people will refer to is how in other comedy blocks shows are growing out of each other or barely slipping at all. It's something NBC will keep an eye on for sure if they can find comedies in the future that can keep a bigger portion of Rachel's audience.
We do know this Sam & Brian: Friends might be done after tonight and NBC's strong source is with their comedies not necessarily their dramas so this might be their first comedy cancellation on the season. Sam & Brian: Friends was a huge success in 2013 but has really fallen off this season and seems pretty dead as Sam & Brian: Friends from 8-9:30pm lost a massive 98 million viewers losing to the Junior Beauty Pageant and nearing losing to ICE's struggling drama Self-Defense. Since NBC has a pretty good lead for the time being over 2nd place ROD they might not be too anxious to pull Sam & Brian: Friends from the lineup just yet. They might wait until sweeps when they know Junior Beauty Pageant will rise a bit from where it is right now.
Seattle Mysteries has been pulled down by low lead-ins losing to Secret Auntie in that 11pm hour but things are gonna get better eventually for Seattle Mysteries which is hanging in there.
ROD had another good Thursday as their auditions hit the midway point with only four more weeks left of auditions before callbacks week in late October/early November. Miss Roderick Pageant is not having to face Rachel like Junior Beauty so it's able to rise almost up to 100 million viewers as auditions hit Nashville to find some of Music City's best talent.
Ashlynn Yennie (The ICE Phederation), ICE Thursday Night Movie: Secret Auntie (ICE-TV) (Channel 7)
ICE HAS WORST NIGHT OF THE MONTH AMID NBC'S HISTORIC NIGHT
Bad karma finally hit ICE after so many beatings on NBC over the years they are facing a lot of adversity as a studio right now as they fail to get a scripted show past 130 million viewers to start this new season and don't get a scripted show past 150 million viewers as NBC and ROD hold both records not ICE. The network seems to be lost without their leader Jessica Lowndes with all of the drama poisoning the studio with their young roster of actors.
ICE is still in great shape as a network especially in daytime as they completely own daytime right now but they've been challenged quite a bit in primetime despite having a favorable lead in the season standings.
Thursday is a painful reminder to the network that they got a lot of growing up to do as Teen Athlete and Self-Defense continue to struggle to start this season.
The lone bright spot for them on Thursday has been their new hit TV movie Secret Auntie which got an addition 65 million viewers beating Seattle Mysteries at 10pm. The other TV movie Something About Amelia has done pretty well in secondary airings as well.
Secret Auntie is such a success already that it has been announced by ICE sources that there will be a sequel movie coming sometime in the spring later in the season and this could turn into a new series in the future but the network does want to get a third movie done before a television series adaption is produced.
Secret Auntie will be airing again this Saturday afternoon and one final time for a little while sometime during Scary ICE in October.
Tomorrow night is Friday so you already know this is a pretty live night and the livest night of the week as always have some big surprise to spark up the NITRO community thanks to the triple-threat diss show war at 8:30pm between Molly in South Philly, I Love Lucy Hale, and The YouTube Life. We already learned a couple of days ago that NBC's Shane Tovar will be headed to Los Angeles tomorrow to appear on ROD's I Love Lucy Hale to say what's on his mind about NBC. Sterling Knight might be on Molly in South Philly and after not getting Shane Tovar she might have something else up her sleeve for tomorrow. The YouTube Life hasn't had that big surprise appearance yet but who knows if ICE's Tammy Oldehoff will appear one of these weeks or not? Tomorrow overall is probably one of the most competitive nights of the week and there's a lot going on as we got the huge series premiere of Liam Spencer on NBC in late night we'll see if he can beat Steffy Forrester's ratings or not. ICE's reliable comedy block of teen sitcoms in front of the New Girls in Town Pageant arrival to Detroit to find the next Janet Moore, the Shields Sisters, or Tracy Kimmell as this probably the most important stop on the audition tour as the best NITRO gems come out of the Motor City. Who Wanted Nichole Dead is starting to get really spicy as Linsey Godfrey's character kidnaps her male friend. It's a busy night all across, where will your ass be on a Friday night?