NBC’s lineup underwent a bloodbath ahead of welcoming back the NBA this fall, when “Found,” “Suits: LA,” “The Irrational,” “Night Court” and “Lopez vs Lopez” were all canceled. While fans of the series lamented the cancellations, a closer look at the ratings explains why freshman shows “Brilliant Minds” and “The Hunting Party” joined the ranks of renewed series while others didn’t make the cut.
NBC’s three “Chicago” series, all of which scored renewals, were the network’s most-watched shows of the season, according to multiplatform live-plus-35-day viewing figures, with “Chicago Fire” averaging 10.36 million viewers, and “Chicago P.D.” and “Chicago Med” at 10.05 million and 9.59 million, respectively. Like past years, the “Chicagos” and two “Law & Order” shows were consistent hits, with “Law & Order: SVU” and the original “Law & Order” bringing in 8.92 million and 6.76 million average viewers.
Notably, “Brilliant Minds” and “The Hunting Party” — the only two drama series beyond the “Chicagos” and “Law & Orders” to make it into the NBC lineup — had a higher 35-day multiplatform viewership than the flagship “Law & Order” series, at 7.09 million and 6.98 million viewers, respectively.
During a press call, NBC senior vice president of program planning and scheduling Steve Kern said the network examined the shows’ performance “week-to-week, episode-to-episode, on both linear and digital, to just try and glean which ones we thought had the best ratings story.” Add that to a similar creative analysis, “and these were the two shows that made their way to the top,” he said.
Canceled drama series “The Irrational,” “Found” and “Suits LA” all averaged lower viewership than the renewed shows. “The Irrational” Season 2 scored 6.12 million viewers, “Found” averaged 5.99 million viewers and “Suits LA” scored 5.52 million.
Though NBC provided a strong marketing push behind “Suits LA,” which was greenlit in the aftermath of the “Suits” streaming frenzy, programming planning strategy president Jeff Bader said the spinoff series didn’t resonate with viewers in the way the network expected.
“It’s just not really showing the potential to grow for us in the future,” Bader said on the call, adding that the network ultimately “had to make some hard decisions.”
“Grosse Pointe Garden Society,” which was not officially canceled by NBC but is not on the network’s 2025-26 schedule, brought in the smallest 35-day multiplatform viewership of the network’s drama series, with just 4.25 million average viewers.
Despite bringing in a smaller audience than “The Irrational,” “Found” and “Suits LA,” there’s a possibility “Grosse Pointe” could move to Peacock (showrunners Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs told TheWrap the show was performing well on streaming, but isolated streaming numbers weren’t made available). Bader said the potential move is “still being discussed.”
On the comedy front, “Happy’s Place” and “St. Denis Medical” scored early Season 2 renewals, averaging 6.73 million and 5.86 million viewers, respectively. Meanwhile, “Night Court” and “Lopez vs. Lopez” got the axe after three seasons, which makes sense given their respective audience average of 3.19 million and 2.98 million viewers.
NBC was always bound to make some tough cuts as the network needed to make room for the NBA’s to primetime. The network will air games during the entirety of Tuesday nights beginning in October. While basketball breaks up the network’s comedy block — which helped launch “St. Denis Medical” last season — Bader noted the scripted programming lineup isn’t “dramatically less” than pre-NBA seasons.
“I actually think we did a good job of carving out scripted time, given that we do not have Tuesdays,” Bader said.
CBS dominates daytime
In addition to closing out the 2024-25 broadcast season as the No. 1 most-watched broadcast network in primetime for the 17th consecutive season, CBS continued its impressive winning streak for daytime, where it has topped broadcast networks for 39 consecutive seasons, since 1986-87 season. Season to date, CBS is averaging 2.76 million daytime viewers, boosted by the three most-watched daytime series in “The Price Is Right,” “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful.”
“The Four Seasons” sees second-week growth
“The Four Seasons,” the reboot of Alan Alda’s 1981 film led by Tina Fey, grew its audience in its second week on Netflix to reach 12.5 million views, up from 11.9 million views, which only included four days of viewing.
“You” Season 5, which debuted a week ahead of “The Four Seasons” on April 24, also saw slight growth in its second week from 10.1 million views to 10.9 million, though viewership slid down to 5.4 million views in its third week on the platform. “You” Season 5 was still the week’s No. 2 most-watched English-language series, behind “The Four Seasons” and ahead of “Forever,” which debuted to 3.7 million views.
“The Pitt” finishes strong
“The Pitt’s” Season 1 finale helped boost the Max original into Nielsen’s overall streaming top 10 list for the first time during the week of April 7, with the medical series becoming the No. 8 overall most-streamed show of the week with 852 million minutes — a series high for the show.
