Drew Barrymore Show sets premiere record as Adam's Law leads new strips
The Drew Barrymore Show opened its seventh season with its largest premiere audience yet, averaging 1.8 million total viewers on 14 September. The episode was up 21% on last season's premiere in total viewers, as reported by Deadline. Season seven began on the same Monday as a new courtroom entry from the same distributor.
That result puts Barrymore's programme at No. 3 among syndicated talk shows. Syndicated means the show is sold station by station to local broadcasters across the United States, rather than airing on one national network feed. The No. 3 placing covers households, total viewers and women and adults aged 18-49 and 25-54.
Total viewers is a straight headcount of everyone watching. Households measures the share of TV homes tuned in. The 18-49 and 25-54 groups are age brackets that stations and advertisers track closely because they shape daytime ad deals. The rankings describe the season seven debut.
CBS Media Ventures distributes The Drew Barrymore Show. A distributor sells the programme to stations, sets launch dates and manages the national sales effort. The company announced its September premiere dates in early August, locking 14 September for its new and returning daytime titles, according to Paramount Press Express.
The new title that day was Adam's Law. It premiered on Monday, 14 September as CBS Media Ventures' newest court programme. The series was created by Judge Judy Sheindlin.
It is produced by Sheindlin and features her son, Judge Adam Levy, hearing cases from the bench. That family link gives the programme a direct connection to one of daytime's longest running courtroom brands. Both The Drew Barrymore Show and Adam's Law come from CBS Media Ventures.
Adam's Law debuted as the No. 1 new syndicated strip. A strip is a programme that airs daily, usually Monday to Friday in the same slot. The ranking leads the class of first-year daily shows this season.
What makes this stand out is the pairing. Two programmes from one distributor started on the same Monday and both opened at the front of their groups. One is a talk programme entering its seventh year. The other is a first-year courtroom strip.
For viewers, this means Barrymore is back for another season and there is a new courtroom option in the daytime lineup. Stations will now settle into regular slots for the autumn. The early numbers give them a first read on where each show sits.
