Juan Pablo Galavis delivered on several months of hype Monday night when the latest star of ABC's aging Bachelor franchise prompted an impressive 17 percent rating bump from last year's premiere. Averaging a 2.7 rating among adults 18-49 and 8.5 million viewers, the two-hour Bachelor opener marked the best premiere for the ABC series in three years.
Though its lead-in was considerable, giving the network its best Monday of the 2013-14 season, Castle (1.8 adults) still managed to fall three-tenths of a point from its last outing. ABC averaged a 2.4 rating among adults 18-49 and 8.6 million viewers.
PHOTOS: THR's Reality Heat List
The runner-up spot went to Fox, which had one original offering in Almost Human (1.7 adults) -- up just a tenth of a point from its last original but improved by nearly a million viewers (6.2 million). Fox took a 1.3 rating among adults 18-49 and 4.5 million viewers.
CBS said goodbye to season one of Hostages with a two-hour finale. The soft freshman drama averaged a 1.1 rating with adults 18-49 at 9 p.m. before falling to a 1.0 (tying its series low) at 10 p.m. The network, which had more success at 8 p.m. with a 2 Broke Girls repeat, averaged a 1.2 rating in the demo and 5.2 million viewers.
NBC put out back-to-back-to-back encores of The Blacklist, the last of which outperformed Hostages, averaging a 1.0 rating with adults 18-49 and 4.2 million viewers.
More encores over on The CW gave the network a 0.2 rating with adults 18-49 and 631,000 viewers.
