• by Wayne Friedman , April 29, 2025

With just a few weeks left of the 2024-2025 broadcast TV season, CBS is set to win the prime-time race — up 2% versus a year ago to 5.72 million average Nielsen-measured viewers.

This is CBS' 17th consecutive season as the leading prime-time broadcast network.

From September 23 to April 20, the four major broadcast networks collectively are up 4% in prime time to 18.93 million Nielsen-measured viewers versus the previous season.

Three of the four major prime-time broadcast networks have seen gains -- September 23 to April 20 --- versus the same TV season a year earlier due to heavy original content, including highly rated live sports programming.

NBC came in at second place, inching up 2% to 5.1 million viewers. ABC is nearly even at 4.28 million viewers (4.29 million a year ago).

Fox grew 14% to 3.83 million, helped by the record-setting Super Bowl.

Taking out sports content, CBS averaged 4.99 million viewers in prime time, followed by NBC at 4.0 million; ABC with 3.58 million and Fox at 2.16 million. Non-sports TV prime-time programming totaled 14.73 million average viewers.

Eight of the top ten prime-time shows were all on CBS: “Tracker” (10.8 million viewers); “Matlock” (9.53 million); “60 Minutes” (8.45 million); “FBI” (8.11 million); “George & Mandy’s First Marriage” (7.98 million); “Blue Bloods” (7.90 million); “NCIS” (7.86 million); and “Elsbeth” (7.78 million).

NBC has the other two shows in the top ten: “Chicago Fire” (7.85 million) and “Chicago Med” (7.56 million).