Season 17 Ratings and Rankings - Was It Really “One of the best in years"?

As I expressed in my last post, Season 17 felt like one of the strongest, most cohesive seasons of all time, but that was just my opinion (well, and Rob’s…), so let’s take a look at where this season landed among viewers, statistically speaking:

Viewership 

Viewership was an interesting thing to keep an eye on this season, because it was the first time in over a decade that Sunny aired a new season on FX (beginning with Season 9, Sunny moved exclusively to FXX). However their return to FX was pretty uneventful, because no media outlet (well one, if you count this blog), nor the cast/crew, acknowledged it.  Even Sunny’s official advertising failed to mention their return to FX. Promotional posters and videos, including all of Season 17’s marketing on social media (which was mostly platformed on and formatted for Meta apps (Facebook and Instagram) this year), solely named FXX as its cable channel.

But despite the lack of advertising (which, is really on par for Sunny, regardless of what channel they are or aren’t on), people did tune into FX for the new season, splitting cable viewership for the entire Season across the two channels (which both aired the new episodes at 9:00pm EST, another first for Sunny, which had been airing new episodes at 10:00pm since Season 2). 

Cable

In every week except for one, more people tuned in to watch Sunny on FX than FXX (perhaps due to the lesser amount of advertisements for off-brand boner pills, or the movie lead-ins as opposed to hours of Family Guy or, you know, more people getting the channel), with the Crossover premiere leading a 3-season high in live viewership. And after taking an expected drop into the next episode (presumably by those who were tuning in just for Abbott), Season 17’s viewers stayed relatively consistent throughout its run:

Overall, total live viewers on FX & FXX (combined) averaged 280,000, peaking at 355,000 with The Gang Fucks Up Abbott Elementary (as previously noted) and dipping to a low of 204,000 with The Gang Goes to a Dog Track in the middle of Season 17s run. (A decrease in viewership between weeks is not atypical. The fact that numbers picked back up and stayed consistent through the finale is a great sign.) This 280k average is approximately 25,000 more viewers than last season pulled on average, and the highest since Season 14’s average of 299,000. (Even considering the bump Abbott’s viewers contributed to the premiere, if we drop that number to Coma’s viewership, the re-adjusted average still comes in higher than Season 15 and 16’s.)

Given Cable TV subscriptions have been on a steady decline for the past decade, an increase in the number of people tuning into Sunny on cable is a pretty exciting thing to see.

But since a large portion of television fans don’t subscribe to any cable service and instead wait until a show is available to stream, it’s important to also try and take a look at Sunny’s streaming statistics. I say try because Sunny streams on Hulu in the US, which does not share its viewership statistics (as a whole or for any given TV show). What they do provide us with, however, is a “Top 15” chart, highlighting the programs on their platform that have been deemed the “most popular” (determined by a non-disclosed, viewership formula that takes into account surge popularity due to new titles/episodes being added to the platform) for any given 24-hour period.

Streaming

Sunny began charting on Hulu’s Top 15 on July 10, 2024, the day its double-episode premiere was made available on the platform, and held a place on its charts every single day following (except for July 24) for over a month and a half, until August 26, 2025, 5 days after its finale had been made available:

(Only a gap in the trend line indicates Sunny was not present on Hulu’s Top 15.)

Peak streaming position was on Friday, July 11, just after its Wednesday, July 9 premiere, where Sunny charted at #2 on Hulu (#1 at the time being “Bachelor in Paradise” funnily enough, considering Sunny’s finale), and Sunny continued to peak around #5-7 each Friday throughout its run, following a new episode uploaded on Thursdays at 3am EST. (For a bit of added perspective, Hulu updates their charts at 3pm EST, so “Friday” is more indicative of how Sunny performed from 3pm EST on Thursday to 2pm EST on Friday, meaning most people were tuning in within 24 hours of a new episode being uploaded.) 

Unfortunately we cannot compare these numbers to any prior Sunny-Hulu streaming statistics, as Hulu only started sharing their “Top 15” in September of 2023, 2 months after Season 16 had finished airing. However, the TV shows that were regularly ahead of Sunny in the charts were mostly reality shows (such as Love Island, Project Runway, Master Chef, and the Bachelor in Paradise), so in terms of “competition” (admittedly there is little during the summer), Sunny was ahead of its pack, arguably one of the most popular comedies on Hulu in July and August. 

Now it’s not like any of this really matters, because viewership (on cable and, now more than it used to be considered, streaming) is mostly tracked to determine whether or not a show is performing “well enough” to get renewed for another season, and Sunny already has Season 18 guaranteed, which really isn’t that dependent on how many people are watching, anyway, if they want another season, they'll get another season. But it does interest and excite me (and maybe a few of you) as a fan to see how many people are actually tuning in to watch this show, 20 years in, and makes me happy to see it performed pretty well in that regard as compared to the last few years. 

Ratings

Of course, eyes aren’t the extent of it, the response to the episodes is arguably more important (though, again, not really that important to Sunny’s survival). So how did people respond to this season?

Reviews

Initial pre-season press reviews were very positive (Rotten Tomatoes shows 11/12 Critic reviews were positive, however I have been unable to track down who or what the negative critic review for this Season was), claiming Season 17 was the “funniest yet” and a “return to form.” These sentiments were definitely observed throughout the fanbase (consistently called "one of the best in years," on Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, and even Facebook) as the episodes aired, and the praise was certainly reflected in viewer ratings:

Taking an average of the star ratings from both IMDb, a long-standing TV database which logs user ratings and Serializd, a newer more social media-based TV rating platform (both of which have at least 1,000 user ratings per episode from verified users), raitings for Season 17s individual episodes currently stand as follows: 

(Serializd rates out of 5 stars and, accordingly, the ratings were weighted (multiplied by 2) to align with IMDb’s ratings.) 

While Serializd users stayed within a smaller range (1.2) for their ratings than IMDb users did (2.1), the two platforms were not that far off from each other in almost all of their ratings for the episodes this season (in fact, Coma and EMTs had identical ratings between the two platforms). 

The two episodes with notable yet still relatively small differences are The Gang Goes to a Dog Track, which was rated 0.24 stars higher on IMDb than Serializd (based on written popular reviews, this can probably be attributed to the “gross out factor” of this episode) and The Golden Bachelor Live, which was rated 0.14 stars higher on IMDb (which might be attributable to the younger demographic on Serializd not caring as much about the Frank-centric episodes). 

Most notably, The Gang Fucks Up Abbott Elementary came in on a whole different level between the two platforms, sitting in the middle of the pack for Serializd users (almost an average between Dog Track and The Golden Bachelor Live’s ratings on the platform) and the way, way bottom for IMDb (Fucks Up Abbott is currently sitting in Sunny’s 5 lowest rated episodes across all seasons, with the lowest rated episode holding 6.6 stars). This major difference makes a little more sense once you look at the ratings graph on IMDb for the episode and notice how many 1-star ratings there are. The overwhelming negative response to the episode seems to be, not due to the fact that a few jokes are reliant on the first half of the crossover, but due to how much screen time the characters of Abbott Elementary are given. (It’s an understandable thing to be a little annoyed by, considering how we only get to see these characters for 4-ish hours every few years now, but a childish thing to bomb the episode’s ratings over.) On the flip side, many 5-star ratings on Serializd were from fans of Abbott Elementary who tuned in only for the crossover this season, so there is some skewing there as well.

So all things considered (the Abbott skew on either side and the fact that every other episode is rated within a quarter star of the other), the average between the two platforms is a fairly accurate idea as to what the “actual” viewer rating for each episode is, and given the fact that the average rating among all episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is an 8.32, that means half of Season 17’s episodes come in “above average” (or well above, in the case of Prime Time, which currently sits in the Top 20 of highest rated episodes of the entire show):

The Average Episode Rating was calculated by taking the average of IMDb and Serializd's ratings of every single individual episode of Sunny and dividing by the number of episodes (177, including the DVD Christmas Special ).

And with half the episodes rated above average (and Dog Track hovering right below the line), where does that place Season 17, as a whole, amongst every season before it? Is it really “one of the best in years”?

In Comparison

Well…yes! (On an average, that is.) All of Season 17’s episodes average out to 8.30 (exactly the same average as Season 6’s), 0.04 points higher than Season 16 (the highest ranked of any Season after 12) and only 0.03 points below Season 2:

Looking just at IMDb ratings, Season 17 comes in 0.03 points lower than Season 16, but this really is easily attributable to the ratings skew the crossover saw on the platform. Considering the response to and ratings for the remainder of Season 17s episodes, I think it’s appropriate to claim that this season was met with more praise and positive reviews than 16’s (still great) season saw, which was the highest rated season since 12. And while obviously not among the top rated Sunny seasons of all time, Season 17's rating of 8.3 is right on par with quality Sunny, which has set an exceptional standard over the past 20 years (clearly visible by looking at the above chart and noticing the range across all 17 seasons' ratings spans only 0.79, with only 3 seasons dropping below an 8/10).

The claim that Sunny’s 17th Season is "one of the best in years" and still just as sharp and hilarious as ever definitely rings true with the viewers. Even if it doesn't fall in to the "top tier" of viewers' favorite seasons, it certainly showed a great mix of what Sunny has to offer (and still can deliver, 20 years in), with a highly-rated "classic" episodes in Mac and Dennis Become EMTs and Frank is in a Coma, a highly-rated experimental episode in The Golden Bachelor Live, and a highly-rated meta episode in The Gang Gets Ready for Prime Time. 

These statistics being stated, I do believe that the cohesiveness of a season (and a strong through-line) can often trump where the average of all the individually-rated episodes will place it among others, so I'm interested to know: does this ranking for Season 17 align with your views on the Season as well? If you'd like to give your opinion (I am asking) please fill out this brief Google Forms questionnaire!