CBS Named Most-Watched Network for 16th Season in a Row, Breaking Record

CBS claims the title of "America's Most-Watched Network" for 16 seasons in a row.

By Aaron Perine

CBS is closing in on being "America's Most-Watched Network" in primetime for 16 consecutive seasons. The latest results from Nielsen have the Paramount brand ahead of the competition over at NBC, ABC and FOX. CBS averages about 5.6 million viewers on average in the highly-coveted primetime hours. These 7-day ratings through April 21st were provided by Neilsen and the dominance from CBS is striking when put into perspective. A big reasons for these wins are having a big four programs to help anchor things around: Young Sheldon, Tracker, NCIS and FBI. Those four stand up pretty well against a lot of the competition, even popular reality series like The Bachelor franchise and America's Got Talent.

When crunching the numbers, CBS also claims 456 billion minutes viewed across platforms. That includes entertainment, news, and sports. From January to late April. For reference, that's 30% higher than streaming minutes over at Netflix.  

"Minutes watched give us an apples-to-apples comparison to measure viewership across broadcast networks and digital platforms," wrote Radha Subramanyam, chief research and analytics officer at CBS. "CBS continues to aggregate a mass multiplatform audience with the Network programming up nearly +6% compared to this time last year, which speaks to how the popularity of our programming continues to resonate with viewers." 

CBS Renews A New Favorite After Strong Rookie Campaign

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Leaning into existing hits has been a smart strategy over at CBS. (See the fervent viewership of Young Sheldon for more on that…) This season, Tracker has drawn a lot of buzz, but fans of Elsbeth have been charmed by the Carrie Preston spinoff as well. The strong first days of The Good Wife spinoff have been enough for CBS to already renew the program.

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"Elsbeth has charmed audiences with its singular blend of delightful humor, distinctive 'how-done-it' storytelling, and the inventive, brilliant quirkiness of Elsbeth Tascioni," Amy Reisenbach, president of CBS Entertainment previously explained in a statement. "Executive producers Robert and Michelle King have a stellar track record for creating critically acclaimed series full of unforgettable characters and, alongside showrunner Jonathan Tolins and his writing team, have developed an incredibly entertaining and engrossing New York City-centric world for the show to explore. We are grateful to the uniquely talented cast, led by Carrie Preston, Wendell Pierce and Carra Patterson, for bringing these wonderful characters to life in the company of a world-class roster of weekly guest stars."

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