Can You Guess The Most-Watched TV Premiere This Season?
By Movieguide® Contributor
CBS’s TRACKER is the most-watched premiere so far this season–it’s also the most-watched broadcast premiere in three years.
Deadline reported:
CBS‘ Tracker is starting the 2024-25 season the way it ended the 2023-24 one — on top of the broadcast program rankings. The Season 2 premiere of the procedural drama starring Justin Hartley drew 8.3M Live+Same Day linear viewers Oct. 13 in its new Sunday 8 PM time period, according to Nielsen data. That is Tracker’s most watched episode since its post-Super Bowl debut, with the 20th TV-produced series ranking as the #1 entertainment program of the week across broadcast and cable in total viewers.
It is also the most-watched linear premiere of the 2024-25 broadcast season so far, edging CBS’ hot newcomer, Matlock (7.7M), which launched with a “sneak peak” in the same Sunday 8 PM slot coming out of 60 Minutes three weeks ago. Both series faced NBC’s Sunday Night Football, Tracker, which built onto its 60 Minutes viewership lead-in by 13%, also aired against MLB playoff coverage on Fox.
TRACKER follows Justin Hartley as Colter Shaw, a lone-wolf survivalist who roams the country as a reward seeker, using his expert tracking skills to help private citizens and law enforcement solve all manner of mysteries while contending with his own fractured family.
“He’s an interesting cat, because he’s reactive to a point,” Hartley says of his character. “But for things like this he has the ability to sit on them until the time is right to strike.” That said, the actor promises Colter “will get to the bottom of it. He’ll find out who’s lying to him and he’ll find out why they’re lying to him.”
Hartley says that TRACKER appeals to a variety of audiences because, “I think a lot of times, it’s all about the message or this political topic. Sometimes, it gets lost in the shuffle that we are entertainers. I want people to watch something and to be entertained.”
He continued: “Colter Shaw is not agenda-driven, necessarily. He’s a businessman. He takes the money, that’s how he makes his living. He’s not politically driven. He’s driven by doing the right thing. And, where does that come from? Well, that comes from his childhood, and we unpack that in the series.”
TRACKER is based on “The Never Game” by Jeffrey Deaver.
TRACKER is available on CBS, Hulu, and Paramount +.
- Content: +2Share:
- Content: +3