TV Finale Ratings: ‘Matlock,’ ‘Severance’ and ‘Abbott Elementary’ Finish Strong

After scoring strong ratings for its freshman season, “Matlock” kicked off broadcast’s spring finales with impressive results that cemented the CBS show’s status as the season’s most-watched new series.

The two-hour Season 1 finale of “Matlock” scored 5.6 million viewers on April 17, leading the Kathy Bates-led series to rank as the No. 1 new broadcast series and No. 2 broadcast series overall of the 2024-25 TV season — a ranking that remained consistent when looking at delayed viewing data. “Matlock” averaged 17 million viewers across broadcast and streaming, according to Nielsen-live-plus-35-day figures and streaming data.

While viewership for the finale was slightly down from the 7.73 million live-plus-same-day viewers brought in by the “Matlock” premiere in September, the shift from the premiere’s special Sunday airing following”60 Minutes” to its usual Thursday timeslot might’ve accounted for shedding some viewers.

“Abbott Elementary” also closed its fourth season April 16, bringing in 4.75 million viewers across ABC, Hulu, Hulu on Disney+ and other platforms in its first three days of viewing. The finale grew to 5.1 million total viewers by its fourth day, inching towards the 6.19 million viewers the Season 4 premiere scored in its first week of multiplatform viewing.

While “Abbott” finales typically leave off on a more dramatic note — like the Season 3 finale seeing Quinta Brunson’s Janine and Tyler James Williams’ Gregory finally getting together — this year the show had its big twist a couple episodes before the finale, which might explain the slight ratings downtick. As viewers tuned in to see the fallout from that twist in the April 2 episode, live-plus-three-day viewership saw an uptick from 4.85 million to 4.87 million viewers between episodes while live-plus-seven-day numbers went from 5.93 million to 6 million viewers.

More broadcast finales are set to air in the coming days, with “The Conners” airing its series finale Wednesday night (ratings for which will be available Thursday), “Night Court” wrapping up its third season May 6 and “St. Denis Medical” finishing its first on April 29.

On the streaming side, viewership figures for the “Severance” Season 2 finale, which debuted March 21 on Apple TV+, appeared on Nielsen’s streaming charts for the week of March 17, which saw the show score a new weekly viewership high of 876 million minutes across its two seasons. While Apple TV+ has not made exact viewing numbers for the finale available (and Nielsen doesn’t break out viewership for specific episodes), it’s safe to assume the finale drove tune-in.

“Severance” has already been on a ratings roll this season, appearing on Nielsen’s top 10 list of streaming originals for the entirety of Season 2 over 10 consecutive weeks. The finale boosted the Adam Scott-led show into the overall top 10 list across both acquired and streaming programs.

“The Pitt” makes its Nielsen Top 10 debut

Having premiered Jan. 9, “The Pitt” made its Nielsen streaming chart debut during the week of March 17, which marked the premiere of the medical drama’s 12th episode — with Nielsen noting the Max show had been just outside the range of the charts for several weeks. During the March 17-23 interval, “The Pitt” tallied up 466 million minutes, landing at No. 8 on the originals list ahead of Prime Video’s “Invincible” and Netflix’s “Running Point.”

This comes nearly a week after Max dropped the season finale, also revealing the show has been averaging 10 million viewers per episode.

Asian American TV audiences grow

This week, Nielsen released its annual report for viewing habits for audiences of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) descent, which found that audiences in those groups over-indexed the total U.S. for share of time spent with Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video, coming in at 39.4% and 35.5%, respectively.

The report also revealed a spike in AANHPI audiences for live sports, with audiences spending 15% more time viewing than the general public as Asian American viewership soared 146% for the 2024 World Series, while AANHPI viewership of the 2024 NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship grew almost 70% year over year.

“Black Mirror” grows in second week

After Charlie Brooker’s “Black Mirror” debuted a fresh batch of six episodes — including a sequel to fan-favorite “USS Callister” — to a lukewarm audience of 7.1 million views the week of April 7, viewership for Season 7 grew to 10.6 million in its second week, ranking as Netflix’s No. 1 most-watched English-language TV show during the week of April 14.

Viewership for the second week is more on par with Season 6’s premiere numbers, which scored 11.3 million views the week of June 12, 2023.

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