Wednesday’s launch of Fox’s “The Masked Singer” was the highest-rated unscripted debut on any network in over seven years.
The new year has its first smash-hit TV show — and it’s a weird one.
With a 3.0 Nielsen rating among adults 18-49, Wednesday’s launch of “The Masked Singer” — a celebrity singing game show adapted from a South Korean format — was not just Fox’s highest-rated unscripted debut in more than seven years, excluding post-NFL starts, but the highest-rated unscripted debut on any network in over seven years.
The last series to premiere higher in that genre was also a Fox imported singing competition, “The X Factor” (a 4.4 rating in the advertiser-coveted demographic).
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Along with those impressive demo numbers, “The Masked Singer” scored an average of 9.4 million total viewers, according to “Live + Same Day” data from Nielsen.
The Nick Cannon-hosted series — which features famous people entering sing-offs while disguised from head to toe in elaborate costumes to be judged by a studio audience and panelists Jenny McCarthy, Nicole Scherzinger, Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke — was the top-rated unscripted broadcast over the past two seasons.
