NCIS: LA ratings continued to drop Oct. 20 with more NFL Sunday Night Football competition. Check out the latest NCIS: Los Angeles numbers.
NCIS: Los Angeles ratings dropped for the second week in a row, as the CBS drama continued to deal with Sunday Night Football pulling TV viewers over to the NFL game and away from scripted series.
Sunday’s episode “Yellow Jack” put a scare into viewers with the idea of an Ebola outbreak aboard a submarine, but it didn’t scare up a huge audience.
The installment recorded 6.30 million viewers, which was down from last week’s 6.37 (a loss of -0.07, or about 70,000). That’s the second consecutive time NCIS: LA has dropped eyeballs; it was at 6.56 two episodes ago.
While losing 0.07 doesn’t sound huge, the week-to-week drop is obviously a trend going in the wrong direction for the veteran TV crime drama.
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The show also fell one spot amongst the 19 series which aired on broadcast TV this Sunday. dropping from seventh place to eighth place.
More: NCIS alum Scottie Thompson returns to CBS
Moving into the key demographic, “Yellow Jack” scored a 0.7 share amongst adults aged 18-49, which is the priority demo for advertisers (and therefore networks). That was also down week-to-week; NCIS: LA had a 0.8 score last time out.
The decrease dropped it from eighth place into a tie for eleventh place amongst that sub-section of viewers. It tied with ABC‘s long-running unscripted series America’s Funniest Home Videos.
That’s not a total loss—the show had been tied for twelfth place in the demo two weeks ago, so it’s still better than that—but these numbers place NCIS: Los Angeles in the bottom half of the Sunday night rankings within the demographic, and on the lower end of the top half when it comes to overall viewers.
Clearly, NFL football is putting the screws to the Los Angeles spin-off. And the bad news for viewers is that’s not going to change any time soon; in fact it’s going to get worse.
CBS’s official schedule shows that the series has three more episodes coming, two of which will be delayed until 9:30 p.m. because of NFL overrun (CBS also airs NFL football games on Sundays).
Beyond that, starting Nov. 17, the network will periodically have an NFL doubleheader—meaning that NCIS: LA ratings will get even weirder, because it’s either going to be pushed back or it might even be preempted entirely!
Live viewers are likely to take a hit then, because people will forget or be confused by what time the episode is actually starting. And as much as DVR and streaming have become prevalent, live audiences are still a major part of a show’s renewal chances.
While there are some rough seas ahead for fans, hopefully the network will take into account the impact that its football coverage (and that of NBC) has on the show when it comes time to decide on Season 12.