NCIS season 15 finale ratings drop; is this a harbinger for things to come?
Overall, the last episode of this season drew a 1.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic to go along with almost 11.8 million viewers. Obviously, in comparison to most other shows on TV (especially in terms of total viewers) these numbers are still incredible. Yet, we are talking about a series that has for many years been the biggest show on all of TV.
This marks the lowest-rated final episode of NCIS to date, and we don’t think it is too big of a coincidence that the numbers have fallen in each of the two episodes since losing both Abby and Clayton Reeves from the story. Will they improve somewhat at the start of season 16? Probably, if for no other reason than that they often do for the start of a new season. Yet, we do think the long-term impact of losing Abby alongside some other factors (including the continued push towards streaming and fewer viewers opting to check out live airings of a show) are all detrimental towards the future.
It’s never easy to specifically blame one factor for the decline of a series, even if there have been many occasions over the years in which we’ve been tempted to do just that. We do think that the cast turnover, plus young viewers flocking to other ways in which to watch television, are the biggest contributing factors to NCIS losing some steam over time. After all, it has lost some pretty significant players starting with Cote de Pablo early in season 11 and then going into Michael Weatherly at the end of season 13 and now Perrette. While Cote wasn’t there at the start of the show, these three were all around during what we consider personally to be the golden age of NCIS and the time in which the numbers were the largest.
We’ll consider to monitor the ratings for season 16 in the early going — we’re very curious at this point to see how the series in the long-term handles some of these new changes.
Read – Read our full take on the finale
For a little more discussion surrounding the last episode of season 15, be sure to check out the video below! If you like this, be sure to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube for more.
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