Friday Ratings: ABC and Fox Top Perennially Low-Rated Evening

Friday 3/12/21 Preliminary Ratings

Total Viewers
NBC: 3.15 million, ABC: 3.00, CBS: 2.59, Fox: 2.01, CW: 748,000

Adults 18-49:
Fox: 0.5 rating/4 share, ABC, CBS and NBC: 0.4/ 3 each, CW: 0.1/ 1

Needless to say, there is not much you can say when the most-watched network for the night averages just 3.15 million viewers. That said, ABC’s “Shark Tank” topped this second Friday in March with 3.91 million viewers and a 0.6 rating/4 share in adults 18-49 at 8 p.m.. NBC’s “Dateline” (Viewers: #1, 3.14 million; A18-49: #1t: 0.5/ 3 from 9-11 p.m.) bested ABC’s competing “20/20” (Viewers: #2, 2.54 million; A18-49: #4: 0.3/ 2). And NBC’s “The Blacklist” (Viewers: #2, 3.16 million; A18-49: #4: 0.3/ 3 at 8 p.m.), no doubt, did not earn its recent renewal.

Elsewhere, “WWE Friday Night Smackdown” has never been the attraction Fox was hoping for (see network averages above). The CW featured the typically low-rated combo of “Whose Line is it Anyway?” and “Penn & Teller: Fool Us.” And CBS rebroadcast two-hour special “Oprah with Meghan and Harry” into an encore telecast of “Clarice.”