FOX filled its schedule with as much sports as it possibly could last week. NFL football, college football, an MLB playoff game, and the weekly WWE Smackdown did the heavy lifting of filling hours of prime time. Snake Oil managed to pick up three hundred thousand viewers last week. Celebrity Name That Tune picked up one hundred thousand viewers after a week off. The Masked Singer gained three hundred thousand viewers over the previous week.
| Program | Rating | Millions of Viewers | Renew/Cancel |
| NFL Overrun | 6.74 | 26.09 | |
| The OT | 3.88 | 14.02 | |
| MLB Playoffs | 1.69 | 7.02 | |
| WWE Smackdown | 0.54 | 2.16 | |
| The Masked Singer | 0.48 | 3.56 | |
| College Football | 0.48 | 2.08 | |
| Kitchen Nightmares | 0.35 | 1.68 | |
| Hell's Kitchen | 0.33 | 1.85 | |
| Snake Oil | 0.33 | 1.75 | |
| Special Forces: World's Toughest Test | 0.30 | 1.29 | |
| LEGO Masters | 0.22 | 1.01 | |
| Celebrity Name That Tune | 0.21 | 1.24 | |
| 9-1-1: Lone Star (rerun) | 0.10 | 0.82 |
ABC saw most of its game shows lose ground last week. Press Your Luck, may start pressing the exec's patience if its numbers keep falling. It lost two hundred thousand viewers off its premiere. The $100,000 Pyramid was down two hundred and fifty thousand viewers. Celebrity Jeopardy! lost the least, dropping a few tens of thousands. The Golden Bachelor was up about one hundred thousand viewers. Dancing with the Stars lost three hundred thousand viewers.
| Program | Rating | Millions of Viewers | Renew/Cancel |
| Monday Night Football | 2.17 | 10.72 | |
| College Football | 0.82 | 3.54 | |
| Dancing with the Stars | 0.58 | 4.76 | |
| Presidential Address | 0.45 | 4.65 | |
| The Golden Bachelor | 0.45 | 4.09 | |
| Celebrity Jeopardy! | 0.41 | 3.96 | |
| Celebrity Wheel Of Fortune | 0.36 | 3.22 | |
| America's Funniest Home Videos | 0.35 | 2.94 | |
| Bachelor In Paradise | 0.34 | 2.00 | |
| Shark Tank | 0.30 | 2.81 | |
| Sunday Movie: Encanto | 0.30 | 1.62 | |
| Press Your Luck | 0.27 | 2.28 | |
| The $100,000 Pyramid | 0.25 | 2.75 | |
| 20/20 | 0.23 | 2.54 |
CBS tried to amp up interest in the rebooted Frasier last week, airing the first two episodes of the Kelsey Grammer-fronted series on the linear network before moving it over to its home at Paramount+. The premiere was middling at best, and likely not the huge draw to the subscription platform that Paramount was hoping for. The network also did not have much luck with its game shows last week. Raid The Cage lost one hundred thousand viewers off an already low premiere. Loteria Loca lost three hundred thousand viewers as it sank into oblivion. Chances are it will not be renewed, at least not for the fall primetime schedule next season. As a tiny bright spot, Buddy Games was only down a few tens of thousands of viewers.
| Program | Rating | Millions of Viewers | Renew/Cancel |
| Survivor | 0.77 | 4.92 | |
| 60 Minutes | 0.52 | 7.20 | |
| Big Brother (Thursday) | 0.50 | 2.67 | |
| Big Brother (Tuesday) | 0.48 | 3.13 | |
| The Amazing Race | 0.42 | 2.85 | |
| Presidential Address | 0.41 | 3.46 | |
| Big Brother (Sunday) | 0.36 | 2.32 | |
| The Price Is Right At Night (Monday) (rerun) | 0.30 | 3.10 | |
| The Challenge: USA (finale) | 0.29 | 1.75 | |
| Buddy Games | 0.28 | 1.89 | |
| The Price Is Right At Night (Friday) | 0.27 | 3.53 | |
| Yellowstone | 0.26 | 4.32 | Import |
| Yellowstone | 0.25 | 3.84 | Import |
| Raid The Cage | 0.23 | 2.36 | |
| Frasier | 0.21 | 2.35 | Import |
| Frasier (premiere) | 0.19 | 2.11 | Import |
| NCIS: Hawai'i (rerun) | 0.19 | 1.78 | |
| 48 Hours (rerun) | 0.18 | 1.81 | |
| 48 Hours | 0.16 | 2.24 | |
| FBI True | 0.16 | 1.41 | Import |
| Israel-Hamas War: The World On Edge | 0.15 | 1.45 | |
| Loteria Loca | 0.14 | 1.31 | |
| NCIS (rerun) | 0.11 | 1.57 |
NBC filled its prime time schedule with as many episodes of The Voice and Dataline as it could after feasting on Sunday Night football. The Irrational lost four hundred thousand viewers last week, making it the lowest-watched scripted show for the network. Found was basically even with the previous week, maintaining its top spot as the most-watched scripted show. Quantum Leap and Magnum PI each picked up one hundred thousand viewers.
| Program | Rating | Millions of Viewers | Renew/Cancel |
| Sunday Night Football | 4.57 | 16.71 | |
| Football Night In America | 1.26 | 7.98 | |
| College Football | 0.69 | 3.31 | |
| The Voice (Tuesday) | 0.53 | 5.91 | |
| The Voice (Monday) | 0.51 | 6.61 | |
| The Voice (clip show) | 0.40 | 4.34 | |
| Found | 0.35 | 3.28 | |
| Presidential Address | 0.33 | 3.57 | |
| Quantum Leap | 0.31 | 2.71 | |
| Magnum PI | 0.25 | 3.27 | Cancelled |
| The Irrational | 0.24 | 3.50 | |
| Dateline NBC | 0.21 | 2.67 | |
| Dateline NBC (Thursday) (rerun) | 0.18 | 2.23 | |
| Chicago Fire (rerun) | 0.17 | 1.72 | |
| Law & Order: SVU (rerun) | 0.15 | 1.96 | |
| Transplant | 0.13 | 1.97 | Import |
| Magnum PI (rerun) | 0.13 | 1.71 |
The CW premiered FBoy Island last week, and no one cared. Repeats of everything else on the network managed to beat it. A few more people tuned in for college football last week than the previous week while a repeat of Penn & Teller: Fool Us remained the highest-rated non-sport program for the network.
| Program | Rating | Millions of Viewers | Renew/Cancel |
| College Football | 0.17 | 0.74 | |
| Penn & Teller: Fool Us (rerun) | 0.07 | 0.46 | |
| FBoy Island (rerun) | 0.07 | 0.36 | |
| Inside the NFL | 0.06 | 0.32 | |
| Sulivan's Crossing | 0.05 | 0.44 | Import |
| FBoy Island (rerun) | 0.05 | 0.24 | |
| Whose Line Is It Anyway? (rerun) | 0.04 | 1.75 | |
| The Chosen | 0.04 | 0.47 | Import |
| Whose Line Is It Anyway? (rerun) | 0.04 | 0.45 | |
| The Spencer Sisters | 0.04 | 0.41 | Import |
| The Swarm | 0.04 | 0.32 | Import |
| World's Funniest Animals (rerun) | 0.03 | 0.32 | |
| World's Funniest Animals (rerun) | 0.03 | 0.29 | |
| FBoy Island (premiere) | 0.02 | 0.16 | |
| FBoy Island | 0.02 | 0.16 | |
| Sullivan's Crossing (rerun) | 0.02 | 0.13 | Import |
The SAG/AFTRA strike reached the one-hundred-day mark on Saturday. As with the WGA strike previously, the AMPTP reached out to the union on the one hundredth day with an offer to resume talks on Tuesday. The union requested a two percent revenue-sharing plan with streamers that was rejected out of hand during the last round of talks. SAG leadership announced that it would continue to ask for implementation of the plan when negotiations resume. The amount requested works out to roughly seventy-five cents per subscriber.
Networks hope a swift resolution will allow scripted content premieres in January, but the window is closing fast for that to happen. Filming needs to start in the first half of November to have programming ready for a January premiere.
Written by LadyShelley on Oct 23, 2023
Linear TV ratings are a funny beast. Ratings will always, always dip a little year over year. That's just the nature of the beast. A little dip is expected. It's when a show's ratings fall off a cliff that you know it's in trouble.
Network television took a beating during Covid. Ratings for network television lost close to a rating point across the board. Dramas, comedies, and unscripted alike all felt the pinch. This is going to be another one of those moments. Viewers will return, albeit in smaller numbers, but they will return. And for now, even with the smaller audiences, linear television is still profitable for both the networks and the advertisers.
This is also why SAG, WGA, and DGA are all adamant that they want better transparency for streaming. Streaming content is taking a larger piece of the viewing pie. Studios have played shell games with the 'ratings' for streaming shows for years. That may finally be changing with the demands the unions are making to know exactly who is watching what and when.
All the concessions the strikers are seeking might be moot, if the viewers don't return because they found things to do other than watch TV.
It's really hard to make any predictions at this point. Most of the scripted content for NBC (and every other network) isn't airing, so there isn't much to compare it against. I am a bit surprised the numbers aren't higher simply because NBC is the only game in town at the moment if you want to watch scripted content. I thought they might have been able to poach more viewers from other networks, but looking at Quantum Leap and Magnum, the numbers are about where they were last season, if anything they are a little lower.
Sounds like The Irrational might not get renewed once the strike gets resolved, based on the ratings. While I still have to watch this past week’s episode, I think it’s an interesting show.