The War of 18-49, Law & Order

LAW & ORDER (NBC)

Why post this on Wednesday? Law & Order aired sixteen of its twenty total seasons on Wednesdays at 10/9c, the only exceptions being the first two seasons (Tuesday), the 17th season (Friday), and the 20th season (Friday and Monday).

See (who saw) how it all began: Sadly, it's one of three shows that's too old for my ratings digging skillz, so about the first decade of the show's run is mostly a mystery for me from an adults 18-49 standpoint. TVTango says the series premiere got 14 million viewers, and there's a ton of household info there that I won't reproduce here, but suffice to say it looks like the early aughts are reasonably close to being at the show's peak performance. So I can sorta say that maybe, just maybe...

The best of times: ...the best of times were in the early 2000's, when the show was averaging slightly north of a 7.0 demo in originals based on my limited data. An article I read for the 5/16/01 rating said that the show's 9.2/24 A18-49 rating on that evening was a series high, and my guess is that it remained the series high. So this was certainly never nearly as big as long-running Thursday counterpart ER, which had quite a few seasons that averaged higher than L&O's 9.2 peak. The best run of episodes was the end of that 2000-01 season (season 11) and the beginning of season 12, which was really the only time I have the show breaking an 8.0 demo with any regularity.

The worst of times: Starting with around season 13 (2002-03), the show pretty much divebombed, taking double-digit percentage drops almost every season and actually getting shoved out of its historic Wednesday timeslot to Friday for the 2006-07 season. The show does deserve some credit for its one year of recovery in Season 18, when it got moved back to Wednesday during midseason 2008, but a lot of its achievements during that season came against all repeats on its writer's strike-hampered opponents. And just two years later, it had dropped a staggering 48% from that season 18 average. Its series low was a pretty pathetic 1.2 demo for the first two eps of season 20 on 9/25/09 and 10/2/09.

Then vs. now: After the bad start on Friday in season 20, it rose into the mid-1's, not a bad Nielsen for a Friday player. Combined with a widely quoted Angela Bromstad line about how she didn't want to be the person to deny Law & Order its record, most people felt it would return in 2010-11 for a 21st season. That would've put it past Gunsmoke for most seasons for a primetime drama. Instead, as is so often the case, money talked, and they weren't able to get a suitable financial situation in place to bring the show back. It's easy to see why this was a struggle, as the demo ratings for season 20 were less than a fourth of what they'd been nearly a decade ago, and the average season 20 episode spent about half its runtime listing executive producer credits. (OK, maybe a minor exaggeration...) So Law & Order will have to settle for a tie with Gunsmoke in seasons and remain well behind in episode count. That's still a pretty remarkable achievement, and the L&O brand marched on without the mothership in 2010-11.

Adults 18-49 info by season:

Seas	Year	Slot	Avg	y2y	Lo	Hi	Results	Grade
10	1999-00	Wednesday 10:00	6.85		5.4	7.8
11	2000-01		Wednesday 10:00	7.24		5.8			9.2
12	2001-02		Wednesday 10:00	7.42		6.2			8.8
13	2002-03		Wednesday 10:00	6.55	-12%	5.1			7.6
14	2003-04		Wednesday 10:00	5.84	-11%	5.0			7.6
15	2004-05		Wednesday 10:00	4.57	-22%	3.6			6.4
16	2005-06		Wednesday 10:00	3.80	-17%	2.6			4.8
17	2006-07	Friday 10:00	2.75	-28%	1.9	3.6
18	2008	Wednesday 10:00	3.15	+14%	2.6	3.8
19	2008-09		Wednesday 10:00	2.26	-28%	1.7			3.0
20	2009-10	Fri 8:00, Mon 10:00	1.64	-28%	1.2	2.0
21	Spring 2022	Thursday 8:00	0.49		0.4	0.7	detail	C+
22	2022-23		Thursday 8:00	0.45	-8%	0.3	0.6	detail	B+
23	2024		Thursday 8:00	0.37	-18%	0.3	0.5	detail	C+

Historical-adjusted ratings by season:

Seas	Year	A18-49+	Label	Now24	y2y	Lo	Hi	Premiere	Finale
10	1999-00	142	hit	0.54		112	162	158	156
11	2000-01	151	big hit			121	191	154	171
12	2001-02	173	big hit	0.66		144	205	174	170
13	2002-03	150	big hit	0.57	-13%	117	174	160	153
14	2003-04	144	hit	0.55	-4%	123	187	187	160
15	2004-05	112	solid	0.43	-22%	88	157	157	98
16	2005-06	94	marginal	0.36	-17%	64	118	99	111
17	2006-07	73	solid(Fri)	0.28	-22%	50	96	96	69
18	2008	95	marginal	0.36	+30%	79	115	115	79
19	2008-09	75	marginal	0.29	-21%	57	100	73	76
20	2009-10	58	flop	0.22	-23%	43	71	43	68
21	Spring 2022	96	marginal	0.36		74	145	145	76
22	2022-23	106	solid	0.40	+10%	77	141	141	80
23	2024	98	marginal	0.37	-7%	74	127	127	92
AVERAGE:		AVERAGE:	112	solid
CAREER:		CAREER:	1567	icon

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