‘Parks and Rec’ Reunion Special Dominates Thursday with 3.7 Million Viewers

By Will Thorne, Variety
Published May 1, 2020, 12:19 p.m. ET

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In lit’rally amazing news for NBC, the Parks and Recreation reunion special delivered a strong rating and decent total viewership on Thursday night.

The special scored a 1.4 rating among adults 18-49, winning the night ahead of Young Sheldon at a 1.1. Around 3.7 million viewers tuned in to see the likes of Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, and Chris Pratt all get back into character. For comparison, the series finale of Parks and Rec, which aired back in Feb. 2015, scored a 1.6 rating and drew 4.3 million viewers. Earlier on, The Paley Center salute to the iconic sitcom scored a 1.0 rating and 3.4 million viewers. NBC rounded off the night with a new Council of Dads episode, which ticked down 56% from its premiere to a 0.3 rating and just over 2 million viewers.

Young Sheldon still scored the largest audience on the night with just under 10 million viewers. The Big Bang Theory spinoff’s 1.1 rating represents a slight uptick from last episode. The rest of CBS’ programming all came in even on last week. Man With a Plan came in at a 0.7 and 6.3 million viewers, followed by Broke with a 0.6 and 5.1 million, and finally Tommy with a 0.5 and 5.1 million.

Meanwhile on Fox, the season 8 finale of Last Man Standing scored a 0.7 rating and 4.1 million pairs of eyeballs, almost exactly the same figures as the penultimate episode. Fox aired a rerun of the show right after to the tune of a 0.5 rating and 2.7 million viewers. A Mental Samurai replay closed out the night with a 0.3.

Over on ABC, Station 19 dropped significantly from its last episode, falling to a 0.9 rating and 5.5 million viewers from a 1.3 and 6.7 million last time around. How to Get Away With Murder came in even at a 0.6 and 2.8 million viewers, while a new edition of Jimmy Kimmel’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire rocketed up 54% from last episode to a 0.8 and 6.2 million viewers.

Katy Keene and In the Dark both scored a 0.1 rating for the CW, with the former drawing 446,000 viewers and the latter 392,000.

Where to stream Parks and Recreation