The lavishly staged eco-thriller “Der Schwarm” also got off to a good start in the linear ZDF program. On Monday evening, an average of 6.82 million watched episodes one and two of the internationally produced eight-part series. This corresponded to a market share of a very good 24.4 percent from 8:15 p.m. for the start of the series of events. Further double episodes are programmed for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings on linear ZDF. Will the high number of viewers and good ratings be maintained?
In any case, the other channels were lagging behind in Monday’s prime time: 3.25 million switched to the RTL quiz “Who wants to be a millionaire?” with Günther Jauch (13.4 percent), an average of 2.50 million for the ARD documentary “Unsere Meere: Naturwunder Nordsee” in the first (8.9 percent) and 2.04 million for the British crime thriller “Inspector Barnaby: Mord – only for members” on ZDFneo (7.3 percent).
They were followed by the Vox docu-soap “First Dates Hotel” (1.05 million, 3.9 percent), the Sat.1 game show “99 – One: r beats them all!” (980,000, 3.8 percent), the RTLzwei showdown soap “The Geissens – A terribly glamorous family!” (840,000, 3.2 percent) and the sci-fi action film “Transformers 3” on Kabel Eins (670,000, 2.8 percent) and the ProSieben documentary “Toxic. Indestructible. Thilo Mischke on the trail of deadly chemicals. ” (620,000, 2.4 percent).
Back to the “swarm”: ZDF had described the start in the media library as early as February 22 as a great success. Many of the streamers are likely to be younger than the average viewer of linear ZDF. This should explain why the “swarm” premiere among 14 to 49 year olds on Monday had a market share of only 11.7 percent (720,000 viewers). At prime time 8:15 p.m., ZDF was still the winner in this target group – ahead of RTL (11.3 percent, 590,000) and ProSieben (8.3 percent, 480,000).
