This Season’s Winners and Losers : 100 Most-Watched TV Series of 2023-24

Nielsen rankers for the 2023-2024 TV season in total viewers and adults 18-49: CBS' freshman drama "Tracker" takes the crown as the No. 1 entertainment show

TV audiences tracked down “Tracker” in a big way this season. The freshman CBS drama, which stars Justin Hartley as a survivalist who helps law enforcement and others solve tough cases, was the 2023-24 TV season’s most-watched entertainment series. According to the Eye network, that’s the first time a first-year TV series was ranked as the No. 1 show since “Survivor” premiered as an instant phenomenon in 2000 (and that was a summer show, so there’s an asterisk on that one).

“Tracker” was helped, of course, by premiering in February behind Super Bowl LVIII — giving it a huge jump start. And this was an unusual, truncated TV season due to the Hollywood strikes, which meant limited episodic orders for most programs. Last year’s top-rated show, Paramount Network’s “Yellowstone,” hasn’t aired an original episode in more than a year — and yet still made the charts, but via repeats that aired this season on CBS.

According to CBS, “Tracker” is the most-watched new series since “Desperate Housewives” in the 2004-05 TV season. For its first seven episodes, the show has averaged 19 million multiplatform viewers across broadcast and streaming over 35-day viewing.

No surprise, football led the season rankers, by way of No. 1 NFL franchise “Sunday Night Football” on NBC, followed by the return of “Monday Night Football” on ABC. (Combine the “MNF” franchise’s ABC/ESPN simulcast, and that would actually top “SNF.”) Amazon Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football” was close behind in third place — a unique function of its deal with Nielsen, which measures the franchise as if it were a linear telecast. Meanwhile, with “Monday Night Football” back full time on ABC, that gave the Alphabet net the only season-to-season boost among the Big 4. (Among all broadcasters, Telemundo saw the biggest gains of the year.)

CBS and Fox run football on Sunday afternoons, so those broadcasts aren’t eligible for these primetime charts. But they sure help as solid lead-ins, as “Tracker” and even shows like Fox’s “Krapopolis” (which opened strong in its first few episodes as a football lead-out) can attest.

The most-watched comedy of the year was CBS’ “Young Sheldon,” ending its series run on top (and likely even getting a boost from its popularity on Netflix). In the battle of the music contests, “The Voice” bested “American Idol” in viewers, but “Idol” led in 18-49. And “60 Minutes” kept its top 10 streak going for another year.

Besides “Tracker” and football, here are a few more winners and losers of the just-completed TV season.

WINNERS

“The Golden Bachelor”: Depending on whether you consider it a new show, given its identical format to “The Bachelor,” the ABC series was nonetheless the most-watched new unscripted series of the yea -

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r — besting the original-recipe “Bachelor” by an average of more than a million viewers. The two editions are virtually tied in the younger demo — but again, that says a lot about the power of the older-focused “Golden” edition.

“Survivor”: The OG still has legs. Among adults 18-49, the CBS competition series is this year’s top-rated entertainment series. Not bad for a show that just ended its 46th edition (and premiered all the way back in 2000).

Game shows: With scripted fare mostly off the air in the fall, there was room for all sorts of primetime gamers in the list of this year’s most-watched shows: “The Price Is Right at Night,” “Celebrity Jeopardy!,” “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune,” “Password,” “Let’s Make a Deal Prime,” “The $100,000 Pyramid” and more. Fox found big success with “The Floor,” the only fully original format to make this year’s list of 100 most-watched primetime series.

LOSERS

“NCIS Hawai’i”: CBS, you get stink eye for saying pau to this hit series, which was canceled even though it ranks No. 16 in total viewers and was even up year-to-year in viewership. Sure, filming in the islands isn’t cheap, but there should have been a way to make this work.

Basic cable: For most of the 2010s, AMC’s “The Walking Dead” was the most-watched entertainment show in all of TV, broadcast or cable. As recently as last year, “Yellowstone” was the same thing (and the final season of “Walking Dead” still made it in the top 100). This year, just one scripted basic cable show made the list: Hallmark’s “When Calls the Heart,” at No. 89.

Paramount Network: And actually, without the “Yellowstone” phenom this season, Paramount dropped the farthest of any network in the list of 100 broadcast and cable networks, slipping 48%.

America’s most-watched series of the 2023-2024 season are …

Network (Total viewer number; Year-to-year comparison)

Network — 18-49 rating/share (18-49 viewer number; Year-to-year comparison)

1. CBS — 0.77/6 (1,016,000; up 18%)2. NBC — 0.71/7 (942,000; down 15%)3. Fox — 0.68/6 (896,000; down 33%)4. ABC — 0.65/7 (854,000; up 3%)5. ESPN — 0.58/6 (766,000; down 8%)6. TNT — 0.30/3 (396,000; down 6%)7. Univision — 0.28/3 (367,000; down 23%)8. Telemundo — 0.23/3 (308,000; down 11%)9. TBS — 0.22/2 (284,000; down 6%)10.USA — 0.17/2 (218,000; even)

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