NCIS ratings dipped slightly on Nov. 5 as Season 17 returned after the show took a break for Halloween week. See the latest NCIS numbers.
NCIS ratings are some of the best on TV, but even this veteran TV crime drama wasn’t immune to losing a little momentum this week.
Tuesday’s episode “Institutionalized” came in with 10.74 million viewers watching live. That’s down from the CBS drama’s last new episode on Oct. 22 (which had 11.03 million, and that comes out to -0.29, or a drop of 290,000).
That wasn’t entirely unexpected, since Season 17’s momentum was broken up by CBS’s decision to put its entire Tuesday primetime lineup into repeats last week ahead of the Halloween holiday.
(The show’s lead-out FBI also lost viewers this week.)
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And while it was a loss of nearly 300,000 viewers, the series continues to be so popular that it amounted to a relatively minor infraction.
“Institutionalized” was still the only hour of broadcast TV that reached double digits on Tuesday night. It even outpaced ABC‘s much-publicized musical event The Little Mermaid Live (at 8.98 million).
So even in a down week, NCIS is still Tuesday night’s most-watched program on broadcast TV. If you remove the musical from the equation and just look at what’s normally on, the show is beating its competition by a very wide margin; the closest rival was its direct competitor, NBC‘s The Voice, at 8.11 million.
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Amongst adults 18-49, the episode recorded a 1.0 share. That was also down slightly, from the last episode’s 1.1. But the 1.0 was still good enough to be in the Top 5 amongst that sub-section; it ranked fourth out of 12 shows.
The Little Mermaid Live, The Voice and NBC’s medical drama New Amsterdam had a bigger share of that audience.
So put that together with the piece above, and NCIS Season 17 is second in its time slot amongst adults 18-49, and first in total viewers. Clearly, the show isn’t slowing down—even when it has to deal with a week off because of a holiday.
With the rise of streaming services and the growth of more TV options overall, for one show to say that really isn’t common; most shows rarely get into double digits. NCIS is setting a standard.
The show’s future has never really been in doubt, but fans should still definitely be proud of how their tuning in each Tuesday continues to make this series the clear winner on its night and one of the most popular TV crime dramas in recent history.