CBS update on Matlock The film was very well received at its premiere on Sunday evening.

The Kathy Bates-starring legal drama – which shares a name and premise with the 1980s-90s series starring Andy Griffith, but not much else – drew 7.73 million viewers in its debut. Excluding shows that premiered after the Super Bowl, that’s the largest premiere audience for a CBS series in more than five years (since The code followed by a NCIS: Secret Service Stories Episode in April 2019).

The 7.73 million viewers would also have been in the top 5 CBS same-day viewership numbers for scripted shows last season (again, not counting the post-Super Bowl premiere for tracker).

Matlock drew the largest daytime audience among the few network shows that had season or series premieres last week (the 2024-25 Nielsen-measured season officially begins Monday). Among the others, ABC’s Dancing with the stars The largest audience (4.97 million viewers) was just before Survivors (4.72 million) on CBS. The two shows achieved the highest ratings among 18- to 49-year-olds with a 0.73, which corresponds to about 980,000 people in this age group.

High potential followed DWTS on ABC on September 17 with 3.59 million viewers, a good bit ahead of The Good Doctor’s daily average (2.48 million) in the 10 p.m. spot on Tuesday last spring.

Ratings for the premiere of Rescue: Hi-Surf on Fox Sunday – which followed the network’s NFL doubleheader – were not available at the time of publication. Earlier this month, the network’s animated series Universal Basic Boys The premiere, with an NFL opening credits, had 4.03 million viewers, but the second episode fell below the 1 million mark.