100 Most-Watched TV Series of 2023-24: This Season’s Winners and Losers
28.05.2024 - 16:33
/ variety.com
Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large 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.
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