Ratings: ‘The Amazing Race 26,’ ‘Blue Bloods’ drop, ‘Hawaii Five-0’ even

Did we have a chance to witness a catastrophic decline on the part of CBS this weekend? Far from it. As a matter of fact, the network managed to pull itself together rather well considering that its programming was off for a couple of weeks due to NCAA Basketball.

For example, we anticipated that “The Amazing Race” would have dropped even more from a 1.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic to a 1.2, given that it was a particularly long wait for this show between episodes. Once a new season begins here, it typically continues without many interruptions along the way. Do we think that it helps the show’s chances of staying? Maybe a little, but it still is one of the network’s consistently lowest-rated shows, and even if it is cheaper than some of their scripted programming, we cannot imagine that is that low-rent to fly teams all over the world along with cameramen, sound technicians, producers, and host Phil Keoghan.

Also, we didn’t expect “Blue Bloods” to drop only slightly to a 1.3. We still feel way more confident about its future than that of “The Amazing Race.” While it may not be that much better in the demo, it remains a monster in total viewers and is Friday night’s most-watched TV show. Maybe at some point CBS will not care about this as much, but we cannot sit here with a straight face and tell you that there is another program that they could move to this timeslot at 10:00 p.m. Eastern that would do any better.

It’s interesting that “Hawaii Five-0” actually managed to keep the entirety of its 1.2 rating it drew for its last episode, but this may still be a disappointment given that there was no competition from “Shark Tank.” In theory, it really should have done even better.

What do you think about the ratings for Friday, and which one of these CBS shows do you have the most optimism in sticking around? Let us know in the comments.

(Photo: CBS.)