Ratings: Why did CBS air ‘Pure Genius,’ ‘Mom,’ and ‘The Great Indoors’?

We’ve got one question coming out of Thursday night’s primetime lineup, and it’s very clearly the one that we’ve got in the title for this article. Why in the world would CBS — a network supposedly invested in keeping all of their shows around for more seasons — decide to put new episodes on the air on Thanksgiving night?

There’s no clear answer necessarily to this, but there are two things to keep in mind here: This is hardly the first time the network’s chosen to do this even when other major television networks do not, and at the same time, they also all are shows that had a later start in the season because of NFL football. Maybe this is the only way that CBS can make their overall schedule work with the number of weeks that they have.

Let’s go ahead and go through the highlights.

“Pure Genius” – Getting a 0.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic isn’t necessarily doing the show any favors, given that it’s already been confirmed to not be coming back for another season. At the same time, we have admittedly seen much worse.

“The Great Indoors” – Without the presence of “The Big Bang Theory” as a lead-in, the Joel McHale comedy mustered just a 1.2.

“Mom” – Unfortunately, the Anna Faris comedy drew the same exact thing in a 1.2.

“Life in Pieces” – Finally, the family comedy generated just a 1.0 for its own episode on Thanksgiving night.

All of these comedies in particular were down hefty percentage points over prior new episodes.

Here is the network that really should be airing a new bit of programming — Fox. They had a repeat of “Rosewood” last night that, even with adjustments after the fact, likely generated better overall ratings than anything else on the night aside from football. Isn’t that impressive? It also performed much better than any other episode of “Rosewood” for the entire season to date.