Hawaii Five-0 season 8: What should the ratings expectations be?

Hawaii Five-0 season 8 will premiere on CBS this fall, and from the moment it starts airing, you better believe that there’ll be a microscope on ALL aspects of production. When you lose three great performers like Masi Oka, Daniel Dae Kim, and Grace Park within a single year, there is a fear that the show loses much of its heart and soul. We know that there are concerns out there that the show won’t be the same again, and we understand that — yet, we’re going to give the new version a chance, remembering that nobody within the current cast or production can be blamed for what transpired in CBS negotiations.

It’s fair to assume that the departures are going to hurt the season 8 ratings, but there is a slight sliver lining here: The ratings for season 7 were strong enough that there may not be an undue amount of pressure for the show to repeat them. Hawaii Five-0 was one of the rare broadcast series in network primetime to actually grow its performance year-to-year both in terms of total viewers and also the 18-49 demographic. You can cite having a better lead-in in the form of MacGyver for some of this, but people still have to watch this show. We don’t think that many more people were just leaving the TV on after watching Lucas Till and company.

As a whole, season 7 averaged close to a 1.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic, and for the sake of this article, this is the number that really matters the most. Regardless of whether or not it may be fair or an accurate estimation of the people who are actually buying products in 2017, advertisers still covet this age range. CBS also cares about viewers 25-54, but this measure is a little bit more difficult to come across.

So what are the expectations now with the recent exits in mind? Make no mistake that the show will probably decline, and we fully expect for it to. The good news is that there should be a little bit of wiggle room for it still. Our current sentiment on the ratings for the show is this: So long as it draws around a 1.0 on average, it will be very hard to see CBS wanting to get rid of it. Sure, shows are more expensive when they get later in their run, but this is one airing on Friday night. When you look at the present state of ratings on this night, there are other networks that would well up in tears just at the thought of being able to pull something like this off.

What we’re trying to say here is this: We don’t see the show getting canceled in season 8 due to low ratings. Maybe you can make a case that if there are more cast changes, there could be trouble then; we just don’t foresee Hawaii Five-0 being at the point to worry about that.

Did you miss the news about the new additions?

If that turns out to be the case, remember that you can check out some further news on that subject just by heading over to the link here. (Photo: CBS.)