It's time for a journey through the CBS Monday schedule in 2025-26...
fall
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | The Neighborhood | Poppa's House | NCIS | NCIS: Origins | 104 | ||
| 120 | 107 | 110 | 87 | ||||
| 114 | |||||||
| 2025-26 | The Neighborhood | DMV | FBI | Watson | 72 (-31%) | ||
| 101 (-16%) | 81 (-25%) | 78 (-29%) | 46 (-47%) | ||||
| 91 (-20%) | |||||||
| VsAvg | -19% | -36% | -56% | -37% | |||
| Rank | 25/27 | 23/27 | 26/27 | 26/27 | |||
CBS executed its NCIS/FBI flip, and the early results on Monday against ABC football competition were staggeringly bad. The Neighborhood was mostly stuck with 0.3's, while FBI had a 0.29 premiere but dropped to 0.2's for most of the rest of the fall. Comedy newbie DMV had pretty decent retention in the early weeks (starting with a 0.30 after Neighborhood's 0.34) but was already separating from its lead-in by the end of the fall. And, coming off a post-Tracker slot last season, Watson bombed in the 10/9c hour.
winter
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | The Neighborhood | Poppa's House | NCIS | NCIS: Origins | 109 | ||
| 125 | 106 | 117 | 94 | ||||
| 116 | |||||||
| 2025-26 | The Neighborhood | DMV | FBI | CIA | 89 (-18%) | ||
| 122 (-3%) | 80 (-24%) | 100 (-14%) | 67 (-29%) | ||||
| 101 (-13%) | |||||||
| VsAvg | -12% | -20% | -36% | -22% | |||
| Rank | 20/27 | 23/27 | 27/27 | 24/27 | |||
The CBS scripted shows didn't return till just before the end of the winter window, so we're generally capturing only a few episodes with these winter comparisons. Regardless, it was already clear that The Neighborhood and FBI were going to fare a lot better without the football competition. Not so much for DMV, while 10/9c drama newbie CIA looked shaky as well.
spring
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | The Neighborhood | Poppa's House | NCIS | NCIS: Origins | 94 | ||
| 103 | 95 | 103 | 80 | ||||
| 99 | |||||||
| 2025-26 | The Neighborhood | DMV | FBI | CIA | 86 (-8%) | ||
| 122 (+18%) | 81 (-15%) | 96 (-7%) | 62 (-22%) | ||||
| 101 (+3%) | |||||||
| VsAvg | +4% | -15% | -37% | -16% | |||
| Rank | 10/27 | 21/27 | 27/27 | 24/27 | |||
As the end approached, The Neighborhood held up really well, starting with some solid 0.4's in early March, then a drop into the 0.35ish range before ultimately ekeing out a season high 0.43 on its finale night. FBI was below the league average most weeks, but considerably narrowed the gap vs. last year's NCIS into single digits by this period.
Rating the Ratings (about grades)
| Name | Lo | Avg | Hi | y2y | Plus | Label | Plusy2y | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Neighborhood* | 0.2 | 0.34 | 0.4 | -7% | 113 | solid | -2% | detail |
| DMV | 0.2 | 0.24 | 0.3 | 80 | marginal | detail | ||
| FBI* | 0.2 | 0.27 | 0.4 | -30% | 90 | marginal | -25% | detail |
| Watson | 0.1 | 0.17 | 0.3 | -53% | 58 | flop | -51% | detail |
| CIA | 0.2 | 0.19 | 0.2 | 65 | flop | detail |
The Neighborhood: The end result was an eighth straight season in that tight 109-121 range for The Neighborhood, but it was a bit of a ride to get there, as it underperformed in the fall and overachieved as the series neared its end in the spring. Hard to be too generous for a final season that was down in Plus, but this show was never going to have a How I Met Your Mother-like spike. And I have to grade on a bit of a CBS curve as it was one of the few scripted success stories on the network this season. Grade: B+.
DMV: It looked OK at the very start, but ultimately didn't vindicate CBS' decision to cancel Poppa's House. It was also clearly weaker than the whole Bob Hearts Abishola run. For the closest comp among Neighborhood lead-outs, you have to go all the way back to Happy Together, which was one-and-done alongside season one of The Neighborhood back in 2018-19. I gave that a D+, and DMV was probably even weaker in the end than that show, though not by a huge margin. Grade: D.
FBI: It got back to a reasonable level by the spring, but I'm not inclined to throw out whatever happened in the fall entirely. All in all, it does seem like this was a timeslot downgrade as NCIS held up quite a bit better in its return to Tuesday. Grade: C.
Watson: Without the football-inflated season one premiere, that season averaged an 85 Plus after Tracker so this was more like "only" -30% in Plus. And even that gap narrowed when Watson reunited with Tracker on Sundays in the spring, though it was usually at less than 50% retention. All this to say I'm not gonna give it an F or anything, because it was pretty clear even last year this show wasn't succeeding. Grade: D.
CIA: Maybe this is the new normal for 10/9c dramas, as CBS (and others) had a bad time in that hour across the board. But it's still a rough-looking start when lining its year-to-year comparisons up with the more modest NCIS to FBI drops at 9/8c. If it was five points worse than FBI, maybe I could blame it all on the hour, but 15 is too much. Grade: C-.
The names in this last table link to the shows' War of 18-49 pages. Links with an asterisk(*) have been updated with the new info. Updates to younger shows will come later in the summer.
Previous Breakdowns for CBS Monday: 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25
Here's the now updated Schedules Plus for CBS Monday.
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