The long-awaited series premiere of “Girl Meets World” did big numbers for Disney Channel on Friday (June 27) night, but it still couldn't keep up with its lead-in, the original movie “Zapped.”
Airing at 8 p.m., “Zapped” drew 5.7 million viewers, including 1.3 million viewers in the 18-49 demographic. “Zapped” became the top cable telecast of 2014 in several of Disney Channel's key demos, including kids 2-11 (2.9 million), kids 6-11 (2.3 million) and tweens 9-14 (2.1 million).
Airing at 9:45 p.m., “Girl Meets World” drew 5.2 million viewers. Again, Disney Channel accentuated the young demos in which this was the top series launch of 2014, as the “Boy Meets World” spinoff drew 1.7 million viewers in the tween demo and 2.3 million among kids 2-11.
Both “Zapped” and “Girl Meets World” have been available on the Disney Channel WATCH ap and on iTunes since June 23.
As a point of comparison, NBC's “Crossbones” started off reasonably strong a month ago, but in its most recent airing, the John Malkovich pirate drama drew 2.29 million viewers and did only a 0.4 rating among adults 18-49.
And stretching the definition of “also notable” as far as it could possibly go, FOX aired the series finale of “Rake” on Friday and drew 1.32 million viewers and did a 0.3 key demo rating, below the numbers for a “MasterChef” encore.
ABC won Friday on the network side with new episodes of “What Would You Do?” and “20/20” leading the way.