The Breakdown: CBS Wednesday in 2018-19 (Survivor, SEAL Team, Criminal Minds and more!)

It's time for a journey through the CBS Wednesday schedule in 2018-19...


fall

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2017-18	Survivor		Survivor	SEAL Team		SEAL Team	Criminal Minds		Criminal Minds	119
	2017-18	157		157	104		104	95			95	119
2018-19	Survivor		Survivor	SEAL Team		SEAL Team	Criminal Minds		Criminal Minds	109 (-8%)
	2018-19	159 (+1%)		158.87864437634	89 (-15%)		89 (-15%)	79 (-17%)			79 (-17%)	108.885062266868
VsAvg	+51%		0.511484298241574	-24%		-0.244709406699007	-21%		-0.213057333105358	+1%
Rank	1/18		1/18	17/18		17/18	15/18		15/18	10/18

The Wednesday trio from 2017-18 returned intact in fall 2018, and while Survivor continued to excel, the dramas SEAL Team and Criminal Minds could not even remotely keep up with their fall 2017 paces.

winter

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2017-18	The Amazing Race		The Amazing Race	SEAL Team		SEAL Team	Criminal Minds		Criminal Minds	99
	2017-18	123		123	88		88	86			86	99
2018-19	The World's Best				The World's Best	The World's Best	The World's Best	Criminal Minds		Criminal Minds	85 (-14%)
	2018-19	103 (-16%)		103.321057570459	70 (-21%)		70 (-21%)	82 (-5%)		82 (-5%)		84.8664295528759
VsAvg	+26%		0.255585042141765	-33%		-0.325762446703195	-12%		-0.121107175711707	-9%
Rank	6/18		6/18	15/18		15/18	13/18		13/18	13/18

CBS aired a diverse array of lineups throughout the winter, accommodating Celebrity Big Brother, the beginning of the Survivor season, as well as one of the biggest post-Super Bowl disasters ever in The World's Best. This actual three-hour lineup aired just once (February 6), and World's Best later moved to the 9:00-11:00 block, hence the huge difference between the 8:00 and 9:00 averages, but these two shows took up the most Wednesday real estate overall.

spring

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2017-18	Survivor		Survivor	SEAL Team		SEAL Team	Criminal Minds		Criminal Minds	105
	2017-18	144		144	84		84	87			87	105
2018-19	Survivor		Survivor	The Amazing Race		The Amazing Race	SEAL Team		SEAL Team	107 (+2%)
	2018-19	156 (+8%)		156.246451411122	97 (+16%)		97 (+16%)	67 (-23%)			67 (-23%)	106.759500682787
VsAvg	+63%		0.625318467995487	-7%		-0.0708319443561748	-25%		-0.247848706494829	+11%
Rank	1/18		1/18	13/18		13/18	16/18		16/18	7/18

The spring brought an even more impressive uptick for Survivor, the return of The Amazing Race (after a brief run for reality series Million Dollar Mile), and a 10/9c move for SEAL Team.

Rating the Ratings

Name	Lo	Avg	Hi	y2y	Plus	Label	Plusy2y	Results
Survivor Fall*	1.0	1.49	1.7	-12%	157	big hit	+1%	detail
Survivor Spring*	0.9	1.48	1.6	-6%	156	big hit	+8%	detail
SEAL Team	0.6	0.75	1.0	-26%	79	marginal	-14%	detail
The World's Best	0.4	0.67	1.0		71	marginal		detail
The Amazing Race Spring*	0.7	0.85	1.2	-26%	89	marginal	-15%	detail
Criminal Minds*	0.7	0.76	0.9	-23%	80	marginal	-11%	detail

Survivor Fall: It may be just +1% y2y, but that still makes it the biggest Survivor season in Plus since 2005. Grade: B+.

Survivor Spring: And putting up virtually the same raw numbers in the spring is an even bigger feat. Being up in raw numbers for the season finale was quite a capper. Grade: A-.

SEAL Team: After a bad start to the year, it did seem to turn it around a little in 2019, and obviously it had a significant timeslot downgrade for the spring episodes. But it's still a rather shaky property to keep getting this great Wednesday 9/8c slot. Grade: C-.

The World's Best: I don't care what the timeslots were; collapses really don't get more epic than 7.0 -> 1.0 -> 0.9 -> 0.6 -> 0.4. It gives me a little pause that it got back to 0.6 for the last two weeks, but getting flop Plus ratings in the winter from a Super Bowl lead-out is still a remarkable disaster. Grade: F.

The Amazing Race Spring: Obviously it couldn't keep up with the show's major resurgence season in early 2018 (which aired in a much easier part of year) but I still think it looked stronger than the Race's Friday seasons, and maybe even the tail end of the long run on Sunday. It dropped a lot in the four weeks it had a Survivor lead-in, but held up well enough in the early summer eps. Grade: B.

Criminal Minds: The True Plus numbers actually want me to be even harsher than the raw Plus numbers, since Minds had fewer episodes and wrapped up earlier this year. But I don't want to put it at or lower than SEAL Team. Grade: C.

The names in this last table link to the shows' War of 18-49 pages. Links with an asterisk(*) have been updated with the new info. Updates to younger shows will come later in the summer.

Here's the now updated Schedules Plus for CBS Wednesday.