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Coming out of a ratings low prompted by last year’s Hollywood strikes, broadcast networks have successfully regained their linear audience — and CBS is leading the charge.
Since the start of the spring season, CBS has scored the biggest primetime audience among the four major broadcasters for six nights a week, according to Nielsen most current data from Feb. 12 through April 14, TheWrap can reveal exclusively.
“Linear is growing, streaming is growing gangbusters — all of it together is growing — and it’s really about the shows,” CBS Research Chief Radha Subramanyam told TheWrap exclusively. “This is CBS’ secret sauce — it’s about big, popular programs that are still highly inventive and original, but work on linear, on streaming and internationally.”
CBS is home to 14 of the top 20 non-sports broadcast programs so far this season on linear, including the four most-watched shows of the season. New series “Tracker” stands as the most-watched show of the season with 10.14 million total viewers, with “NCIS” coming in second place with 9.83 million viewers, followed by “Young Sheldon” with 9.11 million viewers and “FBI” with 9.04 million viewers.
Amid declining linear ratings across the board and anxiety surrounding the labor dispute’s impact on viewership, Subramanyam noted the unprecedented success marks a “shining example of audience growth.”
When taking into account streaming viewership on Paramount+ and CBS digital apps, the broadcast network’s spring season is seeing a 12% uptick in viewership when compared to year-over-year data, per live-plus-35-day Nielsen and internal data. The growth sets the network apart from others seeing viewership trend downward, including Netflix, whose original series are down 14% compared to year-over-year data, according to an individual with knowledge.
Subramanyam added that the growth reflects the value of going “back to the basics” when looking at the success of new series “Tracker,” which stars Justin Hartley as a survivalist extraordinaire; and “The Good Wife” spin-off series “Elsbeth.” “Tracker,” which premiered after the Super Bowl telecast, marked the No. 1 most-watched new series of the season and saw an 85% uptick in viewers when compared to last year’s fall averages, while “Elsbeth” marked the No. 2 most-watched new series with a 25% increase in last fall’s average viewership.
“You have the lone wolf of ‘Tracker,’ you have the quirky, amazing, brilliant ‘Elsbeth,’ but you also have the ‘FBI’s and the ‘NCIS’s,” Subramanyam said. “They may all belong under the procedural tent, but we’re always reinventing and reimagining. They’re highly contemporary, so they work for young people, and they work for [older demographics].”
“Tracker,” “Young Sheldon” and “NCIS” also marked the most-watched CBS series when considering 35-day multiplatform data, with “Ghosts” surpassing “FBI” for the No. 4 spot on the most-watched list, and all four series averagin over 12 million viewers. “Tracker” averaged 20.4 million viewers across its first four episodes, per 35-day multiplatform data, marking 137% uptick from the time period average a year ago while “Young Sheldon” and “NCIS” scored 13 million viewers.
Just as “Tracker” delivered a staggering audience across both linear and streaming, Subramanyam also pointed to streaming success for new series “Elsbeth,” and relatively new shows “Ghosts” and “Fire Country,” reflecting the network’s shift in thinking about multiplatform viewership. “Ghosts” averaged 12.1 million viewers across streaming and linear, surpassing viewership for “Fire Country,” which averaged 11 million viewers, as well as “Elsbeth,” which averaged 10.8 million viewers.
“We have several shows that average really solid numbers in streaming, but some of our newer shows are doing well because we are developing them and thinking about them for a multiplatform universe,” Subramanyam said. “We’re not limiting our thinking about audience — people will find them wherever they are.”
CBS has already granted renewals to “Tracker,” “NCIS,” “NCIS: Sydney,” “Ghosts,” “Fire Country” and all three “FBI” series (with the flagship “FBI” series scoring a three-season order), while “Elsbeth” remains on the bubble. “Young Sheldon” will come to an end with its Season 7 finale in May, but the network already greenlit a spin-off series following new parents Georgie (Montana Jordan) and Mandy (Emily Osment).
