You mention October 1st and one thing dawns on everyone’s minds – how on earth is it autumn already? But with autumn, comes “The Simpsons”, and with October 1st came its second-ever season premiere in October; the last time that happened was with season 2 in 1990, the premiere episode of which had ten times the viewership of this season’s premiere. Moving on…

Sunday night’s premiere, which saw Homer and co go medieval on our… screens, scored a 1.4/5 demo rating (1.36 unrounded) – steady with last year’s premiere – and drew 3.261 million viewers – down from last year, and is the lowest-ever viewership for a season premiere. (55% of the episode’s viewers were aged 18-49 – around 1.8 million)

Furthermore, unlike last year, “The Simpsons” was not the highest-rated show of Fox’s (post-football) night – it had to share the honour in 18-49 ratings with, and come second in viewership to, new comedy “Ghosted”, which accrued a 1.4/5 figure and 3.58m viewers. On a positive note, “Simpsons” and “Ghosted” tied second for the night on broadcast TV among non-sport shows in the 18-49 demographic (in rounded figures of 1.4 each; in unrounded figures, ‘Simpsons’ pipped ‘Ghosted’ by 0.01)!

Despite some little negatives, “The Simpsons” returned to an OK demo figure on Sunday, which is somewhat surprising after some shaky figures towards the end of last season (multiple fractional ratings) – plus, Sunday’s episode had broadcast TV opposition of around 25 million, the predominance of those viewers being from overrunning and pre-match football coverage.

On an additional note, those watching Sunday’s episode may have seen the appeal at the end for donations for hurricane victims in Puerto Rico. One wonders if they’ll air it again this coming Sunday, where it will receive more exposure (the show has a football lead-in this time).

Until next Tuesday, folks…

Sources: ShowBuzzDaily, SpottedRatings, TVSeriesFinale