‘Going Dutch’ Off To Strong Start On Fox As ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ & ‘Animal Control’ Help Buoy Thursday Night

EXCLUSIVE: Fox is starting off the year strong, delivering a well-performing Thursday night lineup thanks to some new and returning comedies (and Gordon Ramsay).

The celebrity chef kicked things off in the 8 p.m. hour with the return of Hell’s Kitchen Season 23, which delivered its most-watched telecast of the season with 1.8M viewers tuning in, according to live + same-day Nielsen data. That’s up about 200,000 viewers from the previous episode, which was the winter finale in December.

That was followed up by the Season 3 premiere of Animal Control, which was up 8% versus the Season 2 finale to capture 1.3M viewers at 9 p.m. The debut of Fox’s latest comedy Going Dutch retained nearly 100% of its lead-in at 9:30 p.m., which is a big win for the network.

The comedy series duo actually improved on the network’s fall 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. average by 30%. It will be interesting to see how that continues over the course of the winter and spring. It’ll also be worth keeping an eye on Going Dutch‘s performance across the season.

Fox says Animal Control Season 2 generally saw a 58% audience lift after seven days of digital viewing with Hulu doing some heavy lifting. It’s expected that the same would ring true for Going Dutch, though it’ll depend on how it resonates longterm with audiences.

Overall, Fox won the night in adults 18-49, adults 25-54 and adults 18-34, which is a pretty strong showing for the network in the first week of the year.

Averaging 1.5M total viewers across the night, Fox had its best Thursday with entertainment programming in over five months, excluding post-NFL, of course.