After months of criticism and anticipation, the episode “The Masked Singer,” featuring the unmasking of Rudy Giuliani, finally aired on Fox on Wednesday. The episode of the show, starring the former mayor of New York City and former personal attorney for President Donald Trump, received a demo rating of 0.6 and a total of 3.6 million viewers, according to data from fast-affiliate Nielsen.
Viewership for Season 7 has been in motion since its March 9 premiere, with the Fox Celebrity Singing Competition hitting a season high of 4.3 million viewers on March 30, only to hit a season low of 3.9 million last Wednesday reach – which was surpassed from last night new low. The demo of “The Masked Singer” also took a hit, falling from a 1.0 at the Season 7 opener to a 0.6 for a week ago’s episode, which it hit this week.
Last night’s 8:00 p.m. airing of “The Masked Singer” was slightly outperformed by slot rivals CBS’s “Survivor” and NBC’s “Chicago Med” in terms of viewership. “Survivor” had a rating of 0.8 and 5.2 million viewers, while “Chicago Med” had 0.6 and 6.5 million. “Masked Singer” managed to top the 8 o’clock programming blocks on ABC, with “The Goldbergs” and “The Wonder Years” combined drawing 0.4 and 2.3 million viewers for the hour, respectively, and The CW, which 895,000 reached viewers and a rating of 0.1 for the special “Freddie Mercury: The Final Act”.
Final numbers for Wednesday primetime will be available later Thursday, and Variety will update this story at that time.
To date, this season of The Masked Singer has earned an average rating of 0.7 among adults 18-49 years old and 4.1 million viewers in Live + Same Day Nielsen data. In the “latest” data, which includes a week’s delayed playback, “The Masked Singer” climbs to an average of 5.9 million viewers.
On Wednesday’s “The Masked Singer” Giuliani, disguised as the contestant Jack in the Box, sang “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood and the Destroyers. His character received the fewest votes and was dropped from the lineup and unmasked at the end of the episode, prompting panelist Ken Jeong to say “I’m done” and leave the set.
“With all the controversy surrounding you right now, it surprises us all that you’re here on ‘The Masked Singer,'” host Nick Cannon said, with Giuliani adding, “Me too.”
Giuliani said on stage that “the main reason” he chose The Masked Singer — a Fox casting choice that received tremendous backlash when it was first leaked by Deadline earlier this year — be that he just had a granddaughter. “I want her to know that you should try everything, even things that are completely unlike you and unlikely,” Giuliani said. “I can’t think of anything more dissimilar to me and more unlikely than this. And I enjoy the show, I have for years, and it just seemed like fun. I can’t have much fun.”
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