‘The Mentalist,’ ‘The Good Wife,’ and ‘Blue Bloods’ creating major ratings conflict for CBS

If there are two people who we would really hate to become, it would be Nina Tassler and Les Moonves over at CBS. (Tho, we’d be more than happy to be rolling around in Moonves’ money.) The issue that they are going to have is trying to figure out what to cancel and what to renew between some of their long-running shows is turning out to be a complicated one.

Let’s start things off here with a little bit of perspective. “The Mentalist,” “The Good Wife,” “Hawaii Five-0,” and “Blue Bloods” are all shows that have already made it to that syndication threshold, and none of them will be kept around because of that. They are all popular shows with devoted followings, but they also average below a 2.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic.

Just in case all of this was not messy enough, think about their individual achievements for a minute. “The Mentalist” and “The Good Wife” are coming off of 1.8 ratings on Sunday, which are their best numbers in many weeks. Meanwhile, “Blue Bloods” posted over 12 million viewers on Friday night, and “Hawaii Five-0” has brought stability to a timeslot Friday nights at 9:00 that has had very little over the years.

So what stays … and what goes? It’s possible that both “Hawaii Five-0” and “Blue Bloods” are spared, mostly because CBS knows the hard way how hard it is to get things to perform well on Fridays. Therefore, they could keep the two of them around a while longer. If one does go, we would probably say the former just because “Blue Bloods” has such a big overall viewer total, even if it does skew much older.

Meanwhile, “The Good Wife” is just too critically-acclaimed to be canceled, and while “The Mentalist” should be given some more time thanks to its “new beginning,” it is the most likely the one to go.

But we’re going to close this analysis with a bit of a curveball. With “Intelligence” bombing, the Monday night 10:00 pm spot is the only one guaranteed to be open for CBS in the fall. We think that Thursday night at 10:00 will come with it. “Elementary” may have Jonny Lee Miller, but its ratings are not really that much better than any of the four shows we’ve been discussing. Also, it has the benefit of airing on a popular night without NFL overruns. We like the show, but feel like it is the only one that should be sweating the most right now.

Photo: CBS