The Breakdown: CBS Sunday in 2018-19 (60 Minutes, God Friended Me, NCIS: Los Angeles and more!)

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


fall

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2017-18	60 Minutes	Wisdom of the Crowd		Wisdom of the Crowd	NCIS: Los Angeles		NCIS: Los Angeles	Madam Secretary	103
	2017-18	198	87		95	87		90		61	103
	2017-18										198	87	95	87	90	61	103
	2017-18	142		142	91		91	76		76	103
2018-19	60 Minutes	God Friended Me		God Friended Me	NCIS: Los Angeles		NCIS: Los Angeles	Madam Secretary	116 (+13%)
	2018-19	222 (+12%)	104 (+20%)		118 (+24%)	94 (+8%)		101 (+11%)		60 (-2%)	116.409983711606
	2018-19										222.118864652196	103.724940182458	118.154420795853	93.6165766403967	100.551669175596	60.2934308231395	116.409983711606
	2018-19	163 (+15%)		162.921902417327	106 (+16%)		106 (+16%)	80 (+6%)		80 (+6%)	116.409983711606
VsAvg	+38%		0.380811393820867	+20%		0.204032187114622	+2%		0.0195671188519799	+23%
Rank	2/18		2/18	2/18		2/18	8/18		8/18	2/18

The news was positive for CBS Sunday in the fall, as the NFL's bounce-back year helped 60 Minutes, and the new post-60 Minutes drama God Friended Me was able to take advantage and show a little more spunk than last year's Wisdom of the Crowd. That spilled into a gain later in the night for NCIS: Los Angeles, as well.

winter

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2017-18	Wisdom of the Crowd		Wisdom of the Crowd	NCIS: Los Angeles		NCIS: Los Angeles	Madam Secretary		Madam Secretary	70
	2017-18	66		66	87		87	58			58	70
2018-19	God Friended Me		God Friended Me	NCIS: Los Angeles		NCIS: Los Angeles	Madam Secretary		Madam Secretary	75 (+7%)
	2018-19	78 (+18%)		78.3431109734805	89 (+2%)		89 (+2%)	58 (0%)			58 (0%)	75.0833710478443
VsAvg	-9%		-0.0930863448415096	+4%		0.0400908960843273	-25%		-0.251620076818089	-10%
Rank	13/18		13/18	7/18		7/18	17/18		17/18	11/18

The trends basically continued in the winter, with God Friended Me doing enough in standalone January episodes to eke out an early renewal (before proceeding to look much worse later in the season).

spring

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2017-18	Instinct		Instinct	NCIS: Los Angeles		NCIS: Los Angeles	Madam Secretary		Madam Secretary	68
	2017-18	74		74	77		77	52			52	68
2018-19	The Red Line				The Red Line	The Red Line	The Red Line	NCIS: Los Angeles		NCIS: Los Angeles	45 (-33%)
	2018-19	38 (-48%)		38 (-50%)	38 (-50%)		38 (-50%)	60 (+14%)		60 (+14%)		45.2601485117203
VsAvg	-55%		-0.546814256414747	-52%		-0.519234689545481	-16%		-0.161725859156679	-42%
Rank	18/18		18/18	18/18		18/18	12/18		12/18	18/18

The same three dramas continued on into the spring, but at the end of the season they made way for the eight-hour limited series The Red Line, scheduled for two hours on each of the four May sweeps Sundays. It was one of the season's biggest ratings disasters. Shoving NCIS: LA to 10/9c after Red Line really tanked its late-season ratings, but it still managed enough growth from Red Line to mark an improvement on the year-ago Madam Secretary.

Rating the Ratings

Name	Lo	Avg	Hi	y2y	Plus	Label	Plusy2y	Results
60 Minutes	0.6	1.22	2.5	-9%	128	hit	+5%	detail
God Friended Me	0.6	0.90	1.3		95	marginal		detail
The Red Line	0.3	0.36	0.4		38	flop		detail
NCIS: Los Angeles*	0.5	0.83	1.1	-9%	87	marginal	+5%	detail
Madam Secretary*	0.4	0.56	0.8	-10%	59	flop	+4%	detail

60 Minutes: After a rare ratings decline for 60 Minutes last year, a bounce-back year for the NFL helped lead to a bounce-back year for 60 Minutes, getting it back onto its seemingly inevitable long-term upward trajectory. Grade: B.

God Friended Me: This show remains a bit of an enigma; it seems to have some casual appeal because it always gets a good bounce from inflated lead-ins (or even just high overall viewing, as in January), but it has very little DVRing and sometimes looks horrible when the conditions aren't ideal. When it didn't have a lot of help, it looked like a shaky to bad renewal, but it may continue to hide from those problems for another year with a return to 8/7c. Grade: C.

The Red Line: If the goal here was to make the God Friended Me renewal look better, I guess they succeeded. Grade: F.

NCIS: Los Angeles: Even though they were probably a weird pair, I imagine the live-heavy God Friended Me was a better lead-in for this show than Wisdom of the Crowd. But getting buried at 10/9c after The Red Line makes up for a lot of that benefit, and it was an accomplishment to grow in Plus. Grade: B+.

Madam Secretary: True Plus is harsher to this show than the raw trend, presumably because it got to avoid May sweeps due to The Red Line, but what we did see of it in the spring (two 0.4's to end the season) was pretty ugly. It was basically even in Plus in the winter and spring, though, so I won't go overly hard on it. 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 Sunday.