 The season aired on Thursdays at 9 : 00 p.m. , as part of the Comedy Night Done Right programming block . The season premiere , " New Guys " received a 2 @.@ 1 / 6 percent share in the Nielsen ratings among viewers aged 18 to 49 , meaning that 2 @.@ 1 percent of viewers aged 18 to 49 watched the episode , and 6 percent of viewers watching television at the time watched the episode . The episode was viewed by 4 @.@ 28 million viewers and became the lowest @-@ rated season premiere for the series . In addition , it marked a 46 percent drop in viewership from the season eight premiere " The List " . For the first sixteen episodes , the series was able to maintain roughly 4 million viewers . However , starting with the seventeenth episode " The Farm " , ratings began to drop below this threshold . The series hit an all @-@ time low with the twentieth episode , " Paper Airplane " , which was viewed by only 3 @.@ 25 million viewers , and received a 1 @.@ 7 rating / 5 percent share . The series finale was viewed by 5 @.@ 69 million viewers and received a 3 @.@ 0 rating among adults between the ages of 18 and 49 . This made it the highest @-@ rated episode of the season ; it also marked an increase in the previous season finale , which garnered only 4 @.@ 49 million viewers . " Finale " was the most watched episode of The Office since the eighth season episode " Pool Party " , but ranked as the third @-@ least watched finale of the series , following the eighth and first season finales . Although in its ninth season , The Office no longer was NBC 's highest @-@ rated scripted comedy series — it was surpassed by Go On — it often ranked as the highest @-@ rated scripted NBC series on Thursday nights . Rainn Wilson argued that the show 's lower ratings were a combination of the overall trend in lower television ratings in 2012 , as well as the fact that " NBC didn 't promote [ the series ] one bit " . NBC increased their usual ad @-@ price by 200 percent for the finale , asking for $ 400 @,@ 000 dollars per commercial . This was largely due to the anticipated increase in viewership that the finale would bring . 
