Person of Interest Season 4 Episode 1 TV Ratings: Still Tops Prime Time, But Not By As Much As Last Season's Premiere
In terms of viewership, CBS' Person of Interest Season 4 premiere topped the 10 PM hour overall with 10.58 million viewers and a 1.7 rating among adults 18-49. However, NBC's Chicago Fire won the hour with a 2.6 key demo rating and was second overall with 9.14 million viewers. ABC's Forever averaged 6.85 million viewers and a 1.8 key demo rating in its time period debut.
Person of Interest Season 3 premiere averaged a 2.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic with 11.82 million total viewers. Compared with Tuesday's show, there was a 13.91% decline in viewership. Last season, Person of Interest, overall, was the fourth-most-watched network drama in prime time, behind NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, The Blacklist, and within the 18-to-49 age group demographic, it ranked 16th.
Regarding Tuesday's Person of Interest showing at the ratings, wherein it slipped to a 1.7 rating among adults 18-49 and 10.58 million viewers, Daniel Fienberg at Hitfix opined that "people are actively turning away" from it because it is "simply darker and more mythology-based/serialized than the two shows (CBS' NCIS and NCIS: New Orleans) that come before it." As he puts it, "it's not CBS enough for the time period it's in." He maintained that "a fix could be needed at some point. Probably not any time in the immediate future. Almost certainly before next season."
Despite what the numbers say, over ten million viewers seems like a good enough number for the show's initial telecast for the season. In fact, The New York Times TV critic Mike Hale says, "The Season 4 premiere on Tuesday night is a decent demonstration of the show's charms: some action, some humor, some dystopian high-tech intrigue and an ensemble of actors who seem to be having fun and whose characters actually seem to care for one another."
