While the initial reviews weren’t stellar across the board, Revolution, the new series from JJ Abrams, has been racking up fairly decent ratings since the series debuted three weeks ago.
In fact, NBC has already ordered a full series commitment for the show. As Deadline reports, NBC gave full-season orders to Revolution, the Matthew Perry comedy Go On, and The New Normal. Jennifer Salke, president of NBC entertainment, said, “We’re impressed with the imagination and creative direction of the entire team on Revolution, not to mention the immediately strong response we got from the audience.”
Indeed, according to reports Revolution had the biggest drama premiere for NBC in five years. 11.7 million people tuned in for Revolution’s debut, and it got a lot of help coming on after The Voice. Deadline remarked that Revolution “has showed surprising staying power,” with a 10 million viewers average. Entertainment Weekly also mentioned that even with a 15% drop in its second week, it was still the number #1 show in its timeframe, beating out Castle and Hawaii Five-0.
The Hollywood Reporter also points out that Revolution has benefitted from viewers watching shows through DVR time-delay. The Reporter tells us DVR viewership is “up across the board over last season for returning shows, and new series are recouping as much as half their initial audience in delayed viewings.”
Thanks in part to time-delay ratings, Revolution is “in decidedly good health going into its third week,” and it generated a 53% jump in its time delayed ratings on its second episode.
This is all definitely good news for JJ Abrams, who already saw one series, Alcatraz, come and go this year. Clearly, it hasn’t been an easy year for genre TV, the found footage series The River also got yanked quickly, but so far Revolution’s showing strong signs of life.
