Well, if ya do, you’re not the only one! NBC’s revived American Gladiators premiered Sunday with this season’s highest adult 18-49 rating for any new series premiere, and was the Peacock’s top new series debut since Heroes back in 2006, and led the network to its highest non-sports rating during the Sunday 9-11pm ET time period in three years.
“We’re extremely excited by the response to American Gladiators,” said John Wallace, president of NBC Local Media Division, in perhaps an understatement.
The reason the Local Media president is now excited about the show too is that NBC plans to pummel us with the show even further by making the first three episodes of the series available to locally owned and affiliated stations for second runs the weekends of January 19-20, January 26-27 and February 2-3. “Viewers are urged to check local listings for exact re-broadcast times in their areas,” advises the press release.
Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios seemed to stretch a bit to find a reason beyond additional ad revenue for NBC to be so excited about these increased plays. “[American Gladiators] may often air in the same time period as the syndicated series did when it became a smash series years ago,” he said. Yes, it very well may. But hopefully that time slot wasn’t 2am.
Nonetheless, at least for now, it looks like the new Gladiators will muscle its way onto weekends as well, jousting some other shows out of the way. Once again, you are “urged” to check your local listings, and if you’re lucky, the show will be in the same time slot as when you last saw the original, and it will be like your old friend never left!
