Girls Power Disney and Nick Series Premieres
Disney Channel and Nickelodeon had a lot of girl power this weekend – each with two girl-led series scoring well for each network.
First up, Disney Channel’s new sitcom K.C. Undercover, starring Zendaya, debuted to 3.509 million total viewers on Sunday at 8:30pm. (See more from Disney below.) That was led-in by the fourth season premiere of Austin & Ally at 8pm with 3.076 million viewers, up from the show’s lackluster ratings through much of 2014.
At 9pm, Disney’s newest girl-led animated comedy Star vs. The Forces of Evil got a nice sampling with 2.325 million viewers. That was followed by a new episode of Liv and Maddie, which gained from its lead, at 2.569 million total viewers.
Over on Nickelodeon, their girl-centered, football-themed comedy Bella and the Bulldogs debuted on Saturday night from 8-9pm with 2.521 million viewers. That’s better than Nick’s most recent series launches of Henry Danger and Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn back in September (they averaged about 1.6 million viewers).
Disney Channel also released the following press notes about K.C. Undercover’s premiere, along with a swipe at Nick’s Bella premiere:
Disney Channel’s premiere (Sunday, January 18, 8:30-9:00 p.m.) of the spy comedy series “K.C. Undercover” starring Zendaya, delivered 3.5-million Total Viewers and became the #1 top cable TV telecast of the year among major youth demographics: Kids 2-11 (1.7 million/4.5 rating), Kids 6-11 (1.4 million/6.1 rating) and Tweens 9-14 (1.4 million/5.9 rating). Benchmarked across all TV, it’s also the year’s #1 telecast among Girls 6-11.
The “K.C. Undercover” premiere sacked Nickelodeon’s “Bella and the Bulldogs” series premiere (Saturday, January 17) by solid double digits: +13% in Kids 2-11 (1.7 million vs. 1.5 million), +17% in Kids 6-11 (1.4 million vs. 1.2 million) and +48% in Tweens (1.4 million vs. 949,000).
Since January 1, the premiere episode delivered close to 400,000 unique users and 800,000 video starts on WATCH Disney Channel, the application which allows users to watch via their desktop, mobile and connected TV devices.