Are ‘CSI’ season 16 renewal chances helped, or hurt, by finale ratings?

Ever since a few weeks ago, we were very curious to see how the ratings for the “CSI” finale would far. Would the show pull in some huge numbers? There were unfortunately some problems that the show was running into. First and foremost, it was up against the “Saturday Night Live” 40th anniversary special, which ended up drawing some of NBC’s best ratings for a non-sports program in years. Also, it had “Talking Dead,” and not a whole lot of support when it comes to a lead-in.

As a whole, the two hours of the season 15 finale on Sunday drew a 1.1 rating in the 18-49 demographic, and also around 7 million viewers as a whole. These are not exactly great numbers, but if we are being honest, we don’t know how fair it was to expect a whole lot else. This was a show that had basically zero opportunity in which to shine throughout the majority of its season, and has everything from extremely late football delays to preemptions to even episodes airing either against major competition or on different nights of the week.

In the end, the one positive takeaway is that at least this rating was not any worse than we’ve already seen this season. Therefore, we know what the show can do in some of the worst-case scenarios.

While at the moment we’d point to a 60% chance that the show is over this year, we personally want to see at least an abbreviated 16th season to really tie the story together, and give a proper send-off to everyone. Is that too much to ask?