Ratings Debate: Does ‘Blue Bloods’ season 5 have steam for another run?

We must admit that we are somewhat surprised that April 15 is approaching, and there is still no official renewal for “Blue Bloods.” Admittedly, this is something that we expected to see announced weeks ago. CBS tends to release bulk renewals for its shows in March, but for some reason this time around, they clearly have a lot that is still percolating somewhere in their heads.

So for all standard purposes, we still have to consider the Donnie Wahlberg – Tom Selleck crime drama a “bubble show,” even though we are not entirely convinced that it is. Want to know why? That is something that we will explain in our latest daily Ratings Debate below.

The case to keep it – “Blue Bloods” is a viewership monster on Friday night. Say what you will to it being one of the oldest shows on network TV, but it continues to draw more than ten million viewers a week, and at a time Friday nights at 10:00 p.m. Eastern when there are so many other things to do beyond sitting at home and turning on the tube. It is routinely among one of the top 20 most-watched shows on TV, and often finds itself in the top ten.

While the demo ratings are not outstanding, it does tend to fare just as well or better than “Hawaii Five-0,” “Madam Secretary,” “The Good Wife,” “The Amazing Race,” “CSI,” “CSI: Cyber,” “Stalker,” and “Battle Creek.” It compares well to “Elementary,” which has a decent lead-in. Some of those shows have already been renewed, but others are on the bubble.

Also, remember here that “Blue Bloods” also makes some money back in syndication, and seemingly, the cast has another year or possibly two left on their contracts.

The case to cancel it – The only reasonable explanation we could offer is that the network wants to start skewing younger and they clean house on many of their crime shows. Or, they have a great lineup of pilots and they are picking up a ton of new series. Maybe it costs more to film in New York, but that is only speculation. There are some network shows that it is easy to justify canceling, but getting rid of this one, especially if you keep many of the others referenced above, is almost saying that you don’t care about older viewers. We’re not sure you want to blatantly send that message.

(Photo: CBS.)