After the much-talked-about season 27 premiere of South Park, on-air viewers turned out in significantly larger numbers for the show’s second episode.
The Aug. 6 installment, which mocked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (who was not pleased) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, drew 838,000 viewers for its initial airing on Comedy Central — almost double the 430,000 who tuned into the season premiere on July 23. That’s the third-highest initial tune-in for South Park in the past three seasons, behind a March 2023 episode about ChatGPT (in which the AI bot is credited as a co-writer with Trey Parker) that drew 1.04 million viewers and the season 25 premiere in February 2022, which logged 844,000 viewers.
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The season premiere — which took aim at President Donald Trump, depicting him in bed with Satan (among other jabs) — grew to 5.9 million viewers with three days of streaming on Paramount+ and other delayed viewing, so the on-air growth for Wednesday’s episode likely bodes well its eventual total. Cross-platform numbers are likely to be available next week.
The Noem-baiting episode was also Wednesday’s No. 2 primetime show among adults 18-49 with about 455,000 viewers in the key ad demographic (more than the total audience for the season premiere). CBS’ Big Brother led the demo with a little over 800,000 viewers ages 18-49.
The surge for South Park also had a positive effect on its lead-out, Digman! The animated series starring Andy Samberg had 264,000 on-air viewers Wednesday after averaging 144,000 for its first two episodes this season.
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