Code Black finally premiered last week on September 30th, and did fairly well. It was up against Nashville and Chicago P.D, and was lead in by Criminal Minds. Code Black had a premiere rating of 1.5 in 18-49, which beat out Nashville who had a rating of 1.1, but fell behind Chicago P.D who had a rating of 1.7. However, Code Black won its time slot for 10 pm in adults 25-54 with a Live + SD rating of 8.5 million viewers. Code Black also had success with their Live + 3 rating, which was 2.3. This was a 53% increase from their live rating of 1.5. The number of viewers also increased to 11.47 in Live + 3.

Looking at these numbers, the Live+3 rating could be an important one for Code Black. The premiere gained over 2 million viewers in 3 days, so in future episodes I am interested to see if the Live + 3 continues to be higher than Live + SD.  Another interesting thing about the Code Black premiere, was that it retained 75 % of the 18-49 audience from Criminal Minds which was Code Black’s lead in.

Code Black’s ratings were decent for the premiere, but it received several mixed reviews from critics.  The Hollywood Reporter praised Marica Gay Harden for her performance, but thought that the other characters were underwhelming and that the show itself was just average. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Daily News complemented Code Black on focusing on the more chaotic, gritty, and realistic side of medicine and the ER as opposed to medical shows that focuses more on romantic relationships and soap opera drama.

For it’s premiere, Code Black did decently regarding ratings and reviews, so I am interested to see the upcoming numbers and opinions from the second episode which is set to air tonight, October 7th at 10 p.m.