CBS Boasts Impressive Presence Among Top TV Series With 6 Of Top 20 Shows; ‘Tracker’ & ‘Matlock’ Rival ‘Reacher’ & ‘Adolescence’​on May 7, 2025 at 10:04 pm

After claiming an early victory om the 2024-2025 broadcast season last week, CBS is now touting its dominance across the entire television landscape.

Per 35-day multi-platform Nielsen data released Wednesday, the network boasts six of the top 20 most-watched shows across all streaming and linear series, with Tracker and Matlock landing in the Top 5.

There are actually only eight broadcast series among the Top 20 overall; the other two, Will Trent and High Potential, belong to ABC.

Thanks to CBS’ report last week, we already knew that Tracker stood as the top broadcast series of the 2024-25 TV season to-date with 10.84 million viewers per episode after seven days of viewing. But, in the 35-day window, the Justin Hartley-led procedural rakes in an average of 17.5M viewers per episode, nearly rivaling Amazon’s Reacher and Netflix’s Adolescence.

The Nielsen data shows that the top three shows across nearly all of television this season were Squid Game with an untouchable 27.1M viewers per episode, followed by Adolescence with 19M and Reacher with 18.1M.

Matlock, already shaping up to be the second most-watched broadcast series of the season, comes in fifth place in the 35-day multi-platform rankings with about 16.1M viewers per episode, tying with High Potential.

After a long list of Netflix series and one from Paramount+ (Landman), Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage and Ghosts tied for 15th place, while Elsbeth and Watson came in at 18.

Among the broadcasters, CBS easily ranks at No. 1, averaging 9.1M viewers for primetime originals after 35 days of multi-platform viewing. That’s significantly ahead of No. 2 NBC, which managed 7.2M. ABC comes in third with 6.9M, and Fox is fourth with 4.3M.

This marks the first full season releasing competitive multi-platform data, which allows for some meaningful comparison between streaming and linear series. Previously, these comparisons were much harder to make.