Grey’s Anatomy, ABC’s long-running drama starring Ellen Pompeo in the title role as Meredith Grey, was characterized during its first few seasons by dire ratings when the original cast of the show was at its peak carrying the best stories. through the screens. That has all changed over the years, it seems, and a recent Season 18 episode just proved it.
And it is that the medical drama that has just been renewed for a season 19 had the worst audience in its history. A situation that has become frequent for Grey’s Anatomy, which for a long time was accustomed to occupying the top slots on ABC. According to the audience survey conducted on March 17, the 12th episode of the 18th season entitled ‘The Making of You’, broadcast that night in the United States for the first time, had just 3.60 million viewers. This would be the worst rating in the entire history of the medical drama that has been broadcast since 2005.
In the aforementioned episode, Meredith was trying to have a romantic night with Nick (Scott Speedman), while Maggie (Kelly McCreary) discovered a letter left for her by her biological mother, Ellis Gray (Kate Burton). The third and final story that episode 12 of the drama addressed was set in Minnesota. There, Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) and Kai (ER Fightmaster) finished a surgery report while exploring their feelings by kissing in the lab.
It is important to point out that this result shows that Grey’s Anatomy does not escape the trend that currently affects American broadcast television series, which in the last three years have increasingly lost more and more audience when the episodes are broadcast for the first time or ” live”. According to the specialists, this is the moment in which a certain episode is shown in an unprecedented way in the programming grid of a channel. The same does not happen with streaming platforms, where many series have been revived surprisingly for the audience.
According to experts in the field, the trend is increasingly related to the need for people to watch television when they can and not when the programming of a traditional channel indicates it. This is why streaming services have become so popular, allowing viewers to enjoy their favorite shows on demand.
But for Grey’s Anatomy this low rating is not a problem. Different surveys have shown that the medical drama is one of the fastest growing, when calculating the audience that saw an episode of the series within a month after the original broadcast on television. The aforementioned measurement highlights that, under these conditions, the audience of the famous series triples.
That, added to the success it has had on the platforms, led the directors of the ABC network to renew Grey’s Anatomy for season 19. Definitely, the series will not end because of this low “live” rating, although it is still a worrying fact. .
