ABC is Non-Sports Leader on Premiere Thursday

Opposite Fox's NFL game (Rams-Vikings), ABC stood as the non-sports leader on premiere Thursday in Adults 18-49 with its 2-hour 15th season opener of "Grey's Anatomy" (1.8/8) and the 5th season opener of "How to Get Away with Murder" (0.8/4). During prime time among Adults 18-49, ABC (1.5/6) beat CBS' season premiere Thursday, including the high-profile return of "Murphy Brown," by 15% (1.3/5) and NBC's night of premieres by 50% (1.0/4). ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" finished as Thursday's No. 2 TV series in Adults 18-49, coming within 3-tenths of CBS' "The Big Bang Theory" (1.8/8 vs. 2.1/10), and outdelivered the CBS comedy by 40% to rank as the night's No. 1 series in Adults 18-34 (1.4/9 vs. 1.0/7).

With its Thursday dramas consistently posting big increases in delayed viewing, ABC will narrow the Adult 18-49 gap on the night with Fox's NFL coverage and widen its advantages over CBS and NBC in Live + 3 Day and Live + 7 Day ratings. ABC's "How to Get Away with Murder" was among last season's biggest gainers in the Live + 7 Day ratings, more than doubling (+122%) its Live + Same Day Adult 18-49 rating and growing by +2.7 million Total Viewers in the finalized L+7 playback numbers. In addition, last season's "Grey's" added +1.5 Adult 18-49 rating points to its L+SD number in playback to average a 3.4 rating for the season in Live +7.