CBS closes the door on another season of scripted predictions, handing out a renewal and two cancellations since our last update. Keep reading for my thoughts on what their recent decisions mean for the network's future.
Prediction Key:
Week 19 Predictions:
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| Shows' 18-49 demo average, weekly peak performance on Paramount+, and MP+35 ratings for 2025 are listed in parenthesis |
This was an incredibly important week for CBS, with the network making decisions on three more series. This leaves us with no scripted series left to predict, and leaves CBS with few decisions to make ahead of next month's schedule reveal.
CBS kicked off the week with a renewal for CIA. While I had been predicting the show to be canceled from the beginning, that was mostly based on the limited schedule space CBS has available for next season, my suspicion that CBS was ready to move on from the FBI franchise, and how little attention CBS had paid to it post-premiere, never hyping up its performances in the way they often do for shows they renew. Its ratings are only OK, especially for a 10 PM show, and either a renewal or a cancellation could've been justified here. It's surely no major hit, nor is it a clear flop. It's a middling performer, similar to a lot of the shows CBS currently has on their schedule right now. How CBS will schedule all of the shows they've ordered remains to be seen - only two hours of programming have been opened up by cancellations so far, with two new hour-long series ordered and both midseason premieres renewed - but they certainly have a lot on their plate.
Two shows we know won't be back next season are DMV and Watson. CBS canceled both of them last week, in two correct predictions for the CBS Renew/Cancel. Both have been looking very shaky lately, and the CIA rental made it apparent that both DMV and Watson had absolutely no hope. Not only was there no room, but CBS was also issuing renewals to a show with similar linear ratings that premiered months later. If they only needed four weeks of data to make their minds up on CIA, then surely they knew what they were doing with DMV and Watson. DMV wasn't a linear disaster, but it definitely didn't live up to the expectations CBS surely had for it, which had been hailed as the "highest-testing comedy pilot in ten years." Retention from The Neighborhood was modest, its delayed gains weren't all that strong (it did well in the MP+7 18-49 demo early on, but that's not a metric CBS cares a ton about), and attempts to boost he show with 8 PM airings resulted in below-average ratings, which is unacceptable at 8 PM. Watson, on the other hand, looked dead from the moment CBS released their schedule last spring. While it eventually did get a fall slot and a full season (thanks to production issues with CIA), it was originally set to return Sundays at 10 midseason, a sign that CBS wasn't too confident in the show. when it returned in fall, it did nothing to disprove that skepticism. In those ten episodes, its best performance was a 0.16. Thanks to an increased lead-in from Tracker on Sundays, it returned a full tenth higher, but it quickly slipped again, though it stayed high enough for these Sunday episodes to raise its average to a 0.16 in the demo - the second-lowest of any CBS series, only beating the international co-production NCIS: Sydney. With everything else performing well enough (or being cheap enough to produce) for CBS to renew them, it was clear Watson never had a real chance of surviving this season. They gave it a second chance, and it did nothing with it. With these two shows now canceled, and the Neighborhood being announced as being in its final season, CBS's Monday nights will look much different this fall than it did last fall, with only FBI being eligible to be scheduled on the night again.
So what do these final decisions mean for CBS moving forward? Does the renewal of CIA and the cancellation of DMV point towards CBS scrapping their Monday comedy hour? It's very possible. Bob Hearts Abishola did fairly well in its run, but besides that, CBS always struggled to find something worthy of airing behind The Neighborhood over its eight-season run. Five shows aired behind The Neighborhood in its run, and only one of them did well enough to spend multiple seasons in that slot (though veteran Man with a Plan was renewed, but then aired midseason and was quickly canceled). It's not exactly a "cursed" time slot, but it's also proven somewhat difficult for them to find much success there with comedies. Maybe they're ready to make Mondays a drama night. That doesn't mean their new comedy pilots won't be ordered. Eternally Yours, which has been in development for some time, could be ordered and held for the 2027-28 season. CBS has done similar with Sheriff Country and Einstein recently (and also Poppa's House and Matlock, but that was prompted by the strikes, and not a decision CBS intentionally made), so who's to say they won't do it again? The Tillbrooks isn't necessarily done, either. The Monday night comedy hour could stick around, or we could see a shakeup in the Thursday lineup. Shows currently on the schedule could be held until midseason, or moved to the 10 PM Sunday hour that CBS has only programmed midseasons as of late. There are many possibilities for how CBS's schedule can play out, and won't know what they're doing with their pilots until they tell us. For now, it doesn't seem like there's much room for them, but it also feels like a major waste of money (not to mention time, particularly in the case of Eternally Yours) for CBS to have ordered two comedy pilots while planning to cut a comedy hour. CBS is jam-packed next season, and only they have any sort of idea how they'll schedule all of these shows that they've ordered
CBS Renew/Cancel March Madness:
The Elite Eight has now been whittled down to the Final Four in our annual fan voting competition. It was a round of close competition across the board, with Ghosts having the most dominant win, with just over 57% of the vote as it took out NCIS. It's a major reversal of fortune for both shows, as Ghosts lost in the first round last year, while NCIS made the semifinals. CIA was close to matching Ghosts' winning margin, with exactly 57% of the vote in a matchup against its parent show, FBI. FBI will go out in the same round this year that it lost last year, but it's a much closer matchup this time around - it received just 6% of the vote last year against SWAT. Two matches were decided by a single vote. #9 seed Sheriff Country will continue its Cinderella run, knocking off #1 seed Marshals by just one vote. And Matlock defeated another fellow Thursday show, Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage, also by just a single vote. Now, it's time for the Final Four to be whittled down to just two shows, with the championship match just a week away. You can vote to decide which two shows deserve a place in the championship below.
