Supergirl’s premiere on CBS was a success, faring very well in the ratings. Of course, it helped being sandwiched between The Big Bang Theory – CBS’s power series, and Scorpion, another big hit for the network. But considering the show faced stiff competition from NBC’s The Voice, and CW’s Gotham – with the girl of steel stealing some of Gotham’s viewers from the second half of its Monday night airing, she must have done her better-known cousin proud.
Supergirl offers a big step away from most of the dramatic shows on CBS’s lineup – mainly crime dramas of one fashion or another. Though comic book heroes, in general, do well for all the networks currently. Especially during the first year on the air. You can find Marvel’s Agents of Shield, Gotham, Arrow, and The Flash keeping reasonably high ratings points for their different networks.
Interestingly Supergirl faired much higher in the ratings with males except in the 18-34 age group, where women made up 58% of the viewer in that age range. One concern facing the show, though it did well in the debut. It didn’t gain as high of a viewer percentage as predicted, and since almost all the comic hero shows have gone to half or less of the first year viewership with their successive years, it’s something the number crunchers at CBS will probably monitor closely.
Next week may be more telling as the show won’t have the benefit of The Big Bang Theory immediately preceding. Still, the show stirred up quite a buzz on social media – garnering more chatter than the next top five new shows combined for comments on the day after a show’s debut. And the critics seemed to like Supergirl too, giving it the highest Metacritic score for all the fall’s new dramas. “A very good, polished pilot,” was Brian Lowry’s (Variety) description.
According to New York entrepreneur Jonah Engler, “Those in charge of advertising and PR may want to push even stronger on the “girl power” concept to bring more women from the other age categories to the show. It could become a hit, but there’s so much that goes into making a hit work beyond the first couple of episodes.” The writers, producers, and everyone else involved in the show seems willing to do their part. They tried more than 100 styles of glasses for Supergirl’s alter ego, Kara, and several people spent the better part of a day discussing hand placement, wrinkle factor, and other considerations about how the character navigated the burning plane to safety. Of course, Supergirl made those decisions in less than a heartbeat – it’s good to be a superhero.
