The War of 18-49, Law & Order: SVU

 
LAW & ORDER: SVU (NBC) 

Scheduling history: Law & Order: SVU has the relatively rare distinction of airing for 3+ seasons on three different nights. Following a brief Monday stint at the beginning of the series, it aired for 3.5 seasons on Friday, another six during its peak years on Tuesday. Then it moved to Wednesday, and as of season 17, it's actually been on that night longer than any other. It tied the mothership's 20-season run in 2018-19 and also got regularly scheduled on Thursday for the first time; it beat the L&O 20-season record in 2019-20.

See (who saw) how it all began: Law & Order: SVU, the first spinoff in the Law & Order franchise, kicked off on 9/20/99 with a 5.4 in adults 18-49. It then dropped 9% to a 4.9 demo in week two, then rebounded to a 5.0 and 5.4 the next two weeks. My data is limited on season 1, but it looks like most of season 1 fell in the 4's and 5's.

The best of times: For the first half of the aughts, SVU was probably the most consistent show on TV, with seasons 2-7 all averaging within a very tight 10% range. I find most of those seasons pretty hard to distinguish, as they uniformly averaged in the low to mid 5's and would occasionally creep up into the 6's. But one particular result stands out from the rest, and that's the season 5 finale on 5/18/04. That airing found 18.36 million viewers and a 7.4/19 demo, more than 10% ahead of the show's next highest result.

The worst of times: But starting with the 2006-07 season, primetime's banner of consistency headed consistently downward, with four 15%+ declines in a six-season span. Leaving its longtime Tuesday 10pm timeslot and its solid Biggest Loser lead-in certainly didn't help matters, and neither did facing Criminal Minds, but the show didn't even recover that much in its returns to 10:00.  However, even at its depressed numbers, SVU probably deserves some of the credit for CSI: NY's banishment to Friday, as that show took a real hit in the second half of 2009-10 when it had to face SVU at 10:00. SVU then took another huge hit in 2011-12, its first season without Christopher Meloni. 13 eps in season 13 went below 2.0 vs. none in the first twelve seasons, and almost all of the 2012-13 season was below that mark. It's had some rather impressive growth in historical-adjusted numbers since then, and has managed to avoid fractional territory in its first 19 seasons; its first 1.0 came on 5/3/17, and it didn't go below 1.0 until a return to the 10/9c hour in season 20.

Then vs. now: This post was a real learning experience for me. I always thought SVU must have been bigger in the past, since in most of my memory as a ratings follower, it always crushed the mothership L&O. But in fact, it was never consistently bigger than the low to mid 5's, while L&O was much bigger early in the 2000s. It didn't start rating higher than the mothership until season 6. Now, it's lasted for over a half-decade since the mothership's end, and it remains one of NBC's most valuable scripted properties (arguably the single most valuable). It's helped launch Chicago Fire and Chicago PD while taking the hit in one of primetime's toughest timeslots, and has actually managed to carve out some positive momentum in its own ratings at the same time.

Adults 18-49 info by season:

Seas	Year	Slot	Avg	y2y	Lo	Hi	Results	Grade
1	1999-00	Mon 9:00, Fri 10:00	4.76		3.6	6.6
2	2000-01	Friday 10:00	5.00	+5%	3.9	5.7	detail
3	2001-02		Friday 10:00	5.34	+7%	4.3	6.2		detail
4	2002-03		Friday 10:00	5.25	-2%	4.5	6.3		detail
5	2003-04	Tuesday 10:00	5.33	+1%	4.2	7.4	detail
6	2004-05		Tuesday 10:00	5.55	+4%	4.7	6.5		detail
7	2005-06		Tuesday 10:00	5.48	-1%	4.8	6.5		detail
8	2006-07		Tuesday 10:00	4.65	-15%	3.8	5.3		detail
9	2007-08		Tuesday 10:00	4.40	-5%	3.6	5.1		detail
10	2008-09		Tuesday 10:00	3.55	-19%	2.5	3.9		detail
11	2009-10	Wed 9:00, Wed 10:00	2.68	-25%	2.0	3.3	detail
12	2010-11		Wed 9:00, Wed 10:00	2.57	-4%	2.0	3.2	detail	B+
13	2011-12	Wednesday 10:00	1.91	-26%	1.6	2.4	detail	D
14	2012-13	Wednesday 9:00	1.72	-10%	1.3	2.2	detail	B
15	2013-14		Wednesday 9:00	1.79	+4%	1.4	2.7	detail	A-
16	2014-15		Wednesday 9:00	1.63	-9%	1.2	2.4	detail	B
17	2015-16		Wednesday 9:00	1.61	-1%	1.1	2.0	detail	A
18	2016-17		Wednesday 9:00	1.34	-17%	1.0	1.8	detail	B-
19	2017-18		Wednesday 9:00	1.25	-7%	1.0	1.5	detail	B+
20	2018-19	Thursday 10:00	0.84	-32%	0.7	1.1	detail	C+
21	2019-20		Thursday 10:00	0.67	-21%	0.6	0.7	detail	C+
22	2020-21	Thursday 9:00	0.76	+15%	0.5	1.7	detail	A-
23	2021-22		Thursday 9:00	0.65	-15%	0.6	0.8	detail	B+
24	2022-23		Thursday 9:00	0.56	-14%	0.4	0.7	detail	B
25	2024		Thursday 9:00	0.47	-16%	0.3	0.6	detail	C+

Historical-adjusted ratings by season:

Seas	Year	A18-49+	Label	Now24	y2y	Lo	Hi	Premiere	Finale
1	1999-00	99	hit(Fri)	0.38		75	137	112	89
2	2000-01	104	hit(Fri)	0.39	+5%	81	119	106	100
3	2001-02	124	hit(Fri)	0.47	+19%	100	144	121	102
4	2002-03	120	hit(Fri)	0.46	-3%	103	144	121	105
5	2003-04	131	hit	0.50	+9%	103	182	128	182
6	2004-05	136	hit	0.52	+4%	115	160	130	147
7	2005-06	135	hit	0.51	-1%	118	160	135	128
8	2006-07	123	solid	0.47	-8%	101	141	138	109
9	2007-08	133	hit	0.50	+8%	109	154	145	115
10	2008-09	118	solid	0.45	-11%	83	130	126	116
11	2009-10	95	marginal	0.36	-19%	71	117	89	96
12	2010-11	101	solid	0.38	+6%	79	126	126	114
13	2011-12	81	marginal	0.31	-20%	68	102	102	85
14	2012-13	82	marginal	0.31	+1%	62	104	100	81
15	2013-14	95	marginal	0.36	+16%	74	143	143	85
16	2014-15	97	marginal	0.37	+2%	71	143	131	83
17	2015-16	111	solid	0.42	+15%	76	137	124	110
18	2016-17	109	solid	0.41	-1%	82	147	147	106
19	2017-18	114	solid	0.43	+5%	90	134	129	109
20	2018-19	89	marginal	0.34	-22%	70	115	115	78
21	2019-20	81	marginal	0.31	-9%	71	92	92	79
22	2020-21	119	solid	0.45	+46%	81	262	92	110
23	2021-22	127	hit	0.48	+7%	112	155	155	116
24	2022-23	130	hit	0.49	+2%	101	162	162	103
25	2024	124	solid	0.47	-5%	87	166	166	108
AVERAGE:		AVERAGE:	111	solid
CAREER:		CAREER:	2779	icon

The War of 18-49 chronicles the ratings history of veteran primetime series. For more, see the Index.