LAW & ORDER (NBC)
Why post this on Wednesday? Law & Order aired sixteen of its twenty total seasons on Wednesdays at 10/9c, the only exceptions being the first two seasons (Tuesday), the 17th season (Friday), and the 20th season (Friday and Monday).
See (who saw) how it all began: Sadly, it's one of three shows that's too old for my ratings digging skillz, so about the first decade of the show's run is mostly a mystery for me from an adults 18-49 standpoint. TVTango says the series premiere got 14 million viewers, and there's a ton of household info there that I won't reproduce here, but suffice to say it looks like the early aughts are reasonably close to being at the show's peak performance. So I can sorta say that maybe, just maybe...
The best of times: ...the best of times were in the early 2000's, when the show was averaging slightly north of a 7.0 demo in originals based on my limited data. An article I read for the 5/16/01 rating said that the show's 9.2/24 A18-49 rating on that evening was a series high, and my guess is that it remained the series high. So this was certainly never nearly as big as long-running Thursday counterpart ER, which had quite a few seasons that averaged higher than L&O's 9.2 peak. The best run of episodes was the end of that 2000-01 season (season 11) and the beginning of season 12, which was really the only time I have the show breaking an 8.0 demo with any regularity.
The worst of times: Starting with around season 13 (2002-03), the show pretty much divebombed, taking double-digit percentage drops almost every season and actually getting shoved out of its historic Wednesday timeslot to Friday for the 2006-07 season. The show does deserve some credit for its one year of recovery in Season 18, when it got moved back to Wednesday during midseason 2008, but a lot of its achievements during that season came against all repeats on its writer's strike-hampered opponents. And just two years later, it had dropped a staggering 48% from that season 18 average. Its series low was a pretty pathetic 1.2 demo for the first two eps of season 20 on 9/25/09 and 10/2/09.
Then vs. now: After the bad start on Friday in season 20, it rose into the mid-1's, not a bad Nielsen for a Friday player. Combined with a widely quoted Angela Bromstad line about how she didn't want to be the person to deny Law & Order its record, most people felt it would return in 2010-11 for a 21st season. That would've put it past Gunsmoke for most seasons for a primetime drama. Instead, as is so often the case, money talked, and they weren't able to get a suitable financial situation in place to bring the show back. It's easy to see why this was a struggle, as the demo ratings for season 20 were less than a fourth of what they'd been nearly a decade ago, and the average season 20 episode spent about half its runtime listing executive producer credits. (OK, maybe a minor exaggeration...) So Law & Order will have to settle for a tie with Gunsmoke in seasons and remain well behind in episode count. That's still a pretty remarkable achievement, and the L&O brand marched on without the mothership in 2010-11.
Adults 18-49 info by season:
| Seas | Year | Timeslot | Avg | y2y | Lo | Hi | Results | Grade |
| 10 | 1999-00 | Wednesday 10:00 | 7.2 | 5.6 | 7.8 | 10/24 | ||
| 11 | 2000-01 | 7.2 | +1% | 5.8 | 9.2 | 15/24 | ||
| 12 | 2001-02 | 7.43 | +3% | 6.2 | 8.8 | |||
| 13 | 2002-03 | 6.55 | -12% | 5.1 | 7.6 | |||
| 14 | 2003-04 | 5.84 | -11% | 5.0 | 7.6 | |||
| 15 | 2004-05 | 4.57 | -22% | 3.6 | 6.4 | |||
| 16 | 2005-06 | 3.80 | -17% | 2.6 | 4.8 | |||
| 17 | 2006-07 | Friday 10:00 | 2.75 | -28% | 1.9 | 3.6 | ||
| 18 | 2007-08 | Wednesday 10:00 | 3.15 | +14% | 2.6 | 3.8 | ||
| 19 | 2008-09 | 2.26 | -28% | 1.7 | 3.0 | |||
| 20 | 2009-10 | Fri 8:00, Mon 10:00 | 1.64 | -28% | 1.2 | 2.0 |
Historical-adjusted ratings by season:
| Seas | Year | A18-49+ | Label | Now15 | y2y | Lo | Hi | Premiere | Finale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | 2001-02 | 172 | big hit | 2.90 | 144 | 204 | 174 | 169 | |
| 13 | 2002-03 | 148 | hit | 2.49 | -14% | 115 | 172 | 158 | 151 |
| 14 | 2003-04 | 144 | hit | 2.42 | -3% | 123 | 188 | 188 | 160 |
| 15 | 2004-05 | 112 | solid | 1.88 | -22% | 88 | 157 | 157 | 98 |
| 16 | 2005-06 | 94 | marginal | 1.57 | -16% | 64 | 118 | 99 | 111 |
| 17 | 2006-07 | 73 | solid(Fri) | 1.23 | -22% | 50 | 96 | 96 | 69 |
| 18 | 2007-08 | 95 | marginal | 1.60 | +30% | 79 | 115 | 115 | 79 |
| 19 | 2008-09 | 75 | marginal | 1.27 | -21% | 57 | 100 | 73 | 76 |
| 20 | 2009-10 | 58 | flop | 0.98 | -23% | 43 | 71 | 43 | 68 |
| AVERAGE (2001-10): | 108 | solid | |||||||
| CAREER (2001-10): | 972 | ||||||||
*- This show was upgraded to "icon" based on projected A18-49+ totals from the missing seasons.
For more on The War of 18-49, my look at the history of primetime TV's veteran shows, see the Index.
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