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With some on-air help from the NFL, three Fox shows scored big cross-platform premiere audiences in January.
Best Medicine, Fear Factor: House of Fear and Memory of a Killer all delivered at least 11.6 million cross-platform viewers in January. All three shows had post-NFL premieres, with Best Medicine following Fox’s final regular season game and Fear Factor and Memory of a Killer debuting after playoff contests. The three shows also helped Fox Entertainment post a sizable year-to-year gain in total viewing time for the month.
Best Medicine — an American version of the beloved British series Doc Martin — leads the trio with 12 million viewers across platforms. It premiered Jan. 4, so it had the longest time to accumulate more eyeballs via streaming and other delayed viewing. Best Medicine also had the lowest starting point, however, with its initial airing drawing 3.69 million viewers. Viewers have also stuck around: The next three episodes averaged 3.3 million same-day viewers, retaining almost 90 percent of the premiere audience.
Fear Factor: House of Fear premiered after a Jan. 11 wild card playoff game to 6.35 million viewers, with the debut episode growing to 11.6 million across platforms by the end of the month. The update of the 2000s reality staple, hosted by Johnny Knoxville, also had the best adults 18-49 rating of any series premiere so far this season. Subsequent episodes have fallen off, however, averaging a shade under 1.5 million viewers for their first airings.
Memory of a Killer, starring Patrick Dempsey, opened with 7.39 million viewers following the NFC Championship game on Jan. 25 and grew to 11.6 million cross-platform viewers over the next eight days, a gain of 57 percent. That bodes well for the show in its regular home on Monday nights; the show’s second episode delivered 2.15 million viewers, which is close to the same-day averages for fellow Fox dramas Doc (2.32 million before streaming or DVR playback) and Murder in a Small Town (2.25 million).
Including repeats, the three January premieres accumulated 3.5 billion minutes of viewing time in January, and Fox Entertainment shows (i.e., non-sports programming on the network) had 9.2 billion minutes of watch time. The latter number is 21 percent higher than January 2025.
