Ratings are in for 30 Rock’s season premiere last night and the rest of NBC’s lineup of critically-acclaimed, under-watched comedies, and they’re still low as ever. 30 Rock scored a 1.3 in the elusive 18-49 demo, down a tenth of a point from its premiere and finale last season and down 23% from Community’s premiere last year in the same timeslot but right on par with Community’s finale. The rest of the Peacock Network’s comedy block, Up All Night, The Office, and Parks and Rec, scored low too (1.4, 2.1, and 1.9, respectively) with only Parks posting an increase from last week (20%) while the others stayed consistent. As per usual, CBS’s Thursday night double whammy, The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men, handily beat NBC’s comedies, scoring a 4.9 and a 3.7, respectively. But, as is always the case with TV ratings, take this with a grain of salt because Nielsen ratings are an inaccurate and outdated system for determining TV viewership, and the popularity gap between Ashton Kutcher’s crude sexual innuendos and NBC’s critically-acclaimed block of shows probably isn’t as wide as the Nielsens suggest.
