CBS’ Tracker is starting the 2024-25 season the way it ended the 2023-24 season—atop the broadcast ratings. The Season 2 premiere of the Justin Hartley-starring procedural drama drew 8.3 million Live + Same Day linear viewers on Oct. 13 in its new 8 p.m. Sunday timeslot, according to Nielsen data. It was Tracker’s most-watched episode since its post-Super Bowl debut, with the 20th-anniversary series ranking as the week’s No. 1 entertainment program across broadcast and cable in total viewers.
It’s also the most-watched linear premiere of the 2024-25 broadcast season so far, surpassing CBS upstart Matlock (7.7 million), which debuted with a “sneak peek” in the same 8 p.m. Sunday slot from 60 Minutes three weeks ago. Both series face NBC’s Sunday Night Football, Tracker, which built on a 13 percent viewership lead over 60 Minutes, which also aired over MLB playoff coverage on Fox.
Not counting premieres that aired live or were pushed out of their timeslots due to sports, it was the most-watched regular-season premiere in three years—since the September 20, 2021, premiere of NCIS, which kicked off Mark Harmon’s exit arc—and the most-watched regular-season premiere on all of television in nearly two years—since the November 12, 2022, premiere of Yellowstone, Season 5. With a boost from its post-Super Bowl debut, Tracker ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on broadcast television last season with 11.3 million viewers. When Season 2 debuted on CBS, Season 1 was also available on 20th TV’s sister channel Hulu in addition to the series’ current streaming site on CBS’s sister channel Paramount+.
