Ringer Premiere: Did Sarah Michelle Gellar's New Show Hit—or Miss?

Thriller off to good start for CW; 90210 and Parenthood suffer ratings drops on Tuesday night of early-bird fall TV premieres

By Joal Ryan Sep 14, 2011 5:23 PMTags
Sarah Michelle Gellar, RingerEric Liebowitz/CBS

Was Sarah Michelle Gellar's new show a dead Ringer? Did perennial bubble shows 90210 and Parenthood blow up (in a good way)?

Yes, while the fall TV season hasn't started, the early-bird premieres have. The key results from Tuesday's ratings race:

GOOD START

Ringer: Prelim numbers show the thriller scored a CW-solid 2.7 million viewers. That size crowd is up—a lot—from what Life Unexpected premiered to in the same time slot last fall. It's also up—a lot—from what its lead-in got last night.

NOT-SO-GOOD START

90210: Speaking of Ringer' s lead-in… The soap's third-season premiere (1.6 million) was down 25 percent from last fall's opener, which, granted, aired on a Monday night, and not opposite the first part of America's Got Talent finale. So, there's that. And then there's this: Next week, 90210 will be up against NCIS and Glee.

EH

Parenthood: Despite airing after the aforementioned America's Got Talent finale, as it did last fall, the comedy-drama (6.8 million) lost about 1 million viewers from its second-season starter.

WORTH MENTIONING TO POTENTIALLY DISTRESSED PARENTHOOD FANS

America's Got Talent: Remember the part about Parenthood being down about 1 million viewers? Guess how many viewers its lead-in was down from the same night last fall? Yup. In any case, Talent was the night's No. 1 show (13.2 million). 

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