EXCLUSIVE: High Potential, The Rookie and Will Trent all posted notable gains with their first episodes of 2026, handing ABC a promising start to the midseason with a high-performing Tuesday night slate — just in time for a shakeup as The Rookie moves to Mondays to make way for a newcomer.
High Potential returned with its midseason premiere in its new time slot, an hour earlier than it previously aired, at 9 p.m. In seven days, the episode tallied 12.33M viewers across ABC, Hulu, Hulu on Disney+ and digital platforms, leading the show’s fall season average by about 3%, per a combination of Nielsen data and internal streaming data. The episode is up 7% from the show’s fall finale, which managed 11.52M viewers in seven days.
On linear alone, the episode delivered a season-high 8.68M total viewers, suggesting that about a third of the audience came from streaming.
An hour earlier, Will Trent provided a nice lead-in with its Season 4 premiere. The episode collected 8.91M total viewers across seven days, up 12% from the previous season finale’s 7.99M. It marked the best performance for the series since February last year.
Will Trent‘s Season 4 debut is up 5% over the Season 3 average in the seven-day window. On linear, the episode collected 7.21M of those viewers, interestingly translating to just under 1.5M streaming viewers.
The Rookie ended the night at 10 p.m. with a Season 8 opener filmed on location in Prague that seems to have intrigued viewers. The episode managed a seven-day audience of about 9.35M, rising 6% over the Season 7 premiere’s 8.86M viewers in seven days. It’s also up 6% over the prior season average. In fact, it’s the best season opener for The Rookie in six years, since Season 2.
Based on views, which is a different metric that Disney calculates using hours viewed divided by runtime, the Season 8 premiere of The Rookie scored the biggest streaming premiere the series has ever seen and ranks in the top five ABC premieres of all time on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.
The question now is how audiences will respond to the procedural’s move to Monday nights to make way for ABC’s new drama RJ Decker. The Rookie will now follow American Idol, starting January 26. Disney didn’t offer insight into how much of The Rookie‘s viewership came from linear versus streaming, but since streaming has altered many consumers’ viewing habits, the time slot change is not likely to have a drastic impact. The fact that the company touted its streaming success, specifically, would also seem to indicate streaming is a big viewership driver for The Rookie.
The series was crowned the most social program of the entire week across broadcast and cable, up 93% in social interactions versus the Season 7 premiere, suggesting an engaged audience that’s going to keep up with the schedule changes.
RJ Decker, starring Scott Speedman as a disgraced newspaper photographer and ex-con who starts over as a private investigator in South Florida, doesn’t join the Tuesday night slate until March 3. That’ll be another interesting entrant to keep an eye on once it makes its debut. ABC is clearly leaning into the established strength of its Tuesday shows to build up an audience for the new series, and High Potential could prove to be a nice lead-in.
New episodes of Will Trent and High Potential will continue to air on Tuesdays as usual.