Darren Michaels/CBS
'Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders' is not a hit out of the gate, though it easily wins a thin 10 o'clock race.
CBS debuted another procedural spinoff on Wednesday night with the first episode of Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders. The drama, which has gotten a pretty grim critical reception, opened to middle-of-the-road ratings for a midseason entry.
At 10 p.m., Beyond Borders averaged a 1.6 rating among adults 18-49 and 9.6 million viewers. That wasn't too big of a drop from its lead-in, the original Criminal Minds, which brought a steady 1.9 rating in the key demo after Survivor (2.1 adults). In Beyond Borders favor, it easily won the 10 p.m. time slot, though Chicago PD was a repeat on NBC.
It's been just more than five years since the last attempt at a Criminal Minds spinoff, Suspect Behavior, premiered. And while the ratings landscape has changed dramatically in that time, it's worth noting that the short-lived series opened to twice the numbers of Beyond Borders — a 3.3 rating in the key demo and 13 million viewers, outperforming its parent series lead-in.
On ABC, Modern Family led the night with a steady 2.5 rating among adults 18-49. Black-ish (1.9 adults) and the return of yet-to-be-renewed Nashville (0.9 adults) were also steady on the network, while The Middle (1.7 adults) and The Goldbergs (1.9 adults) saw small dips from their last original episodes.
With both NBC and the CW in repeats, the night's only other broadcast originals were Fox's: flat episodes of Rosewood (0.9 adults) and Hell's Kitchen ( 1.1 adults).
