Solid Sampling for Fox’s ‘The Orville’ Preview

Airing in the Thursday 9 p.m. hour out of “Gotham” this fall is not a recipe for great traditional ratings success. The audience will surely be limited. But the premiere/preview of Fox’s one-hour space adventure series “The Orville,” created by and starring Seth MacFarlane, out of an NFL doubleheader did indeed get sampled last Sunday, Sept. 10. Fox is reporting 11.3million viewers across all platforms, which is a 31 percent from the Live + Same day tally. Comparably, this marks the largest debut for any series on Fox since “Empire” on January 7, 2015, and its most-watched telecast since “Empire’s” mid-season premiere on March 22, 2017.

Across Fox NOW and Hulu, “The Orville’s” three-day streaming average audience amounted to 650,000 viewers, making it the most-streamed new Fox drama premiere in three years (since “Gotham” on Sept. 22, 2014) and new Fox premiere in two years (since “Scream Queens” on Sept. 22, 2015) .

Among target men 18-34, “The Orville” delivered a 2.8 rating/13 share, based on the Live + Same Day data, also Fox’s highest-rated broadcast drama debut since “Empire.”