It's time for a journey through the NBC Monday schedule in 2025-26...
fall
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | The Voice | Brilliant Minds | 117 | ||||
| 138 | 138 | 75 | |||||
| 2025-26 | St. Denis Medical | The Paper (R) | The Voice | Brilliant Minds | 75 (-35%) | ||
| 102 (-26%) | 63 (-54%) | 94 (-32%) | 50 (-34%) | ||||
| 82 (-40%) | |||||||
| VsAvg | -38% | -33% | -49% | -39% | |||
| Rank | 22/27 | 22/27 | 26/27 | 24/27 | |||
In September and October, NBC went with its usual two-hour The Voice episodes starting at 8/7c, and the year-to-year drops were quite substantial even in that period. Starting in November, sophomore comedy St. Denis Medical anchored the 9/8c hour, limiting The Voice to just the 9/8c hour. Though it paired with repeats of a Peacock comedy initially, St. Denis consistently turned in league average-ish ratings, holding up as well as anything against the NFL competition. Sophomore medical drama Brilliant Minds had no such luck at 10/9c, dropping as much or more than The Voice.
winter
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | The Voice | The Hunting Party | 123 | ||||
| 151 | 151 | 68 | |||||
| 2025-26 | St. Denis Medical | The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins | The Wall | Brilliant Minds | 65 (-47%) | ||
| 104 (-31%) | 109 (-28%) | 53 (-65%) | 37 (-46%) | ||||
| 106 (-30%) | |||||||
| VsAvg | -7% | -51% | -57% | -36% | |||
| Rank | 14/27 | 27/27 | 27/27 | 26/27 | |||
The winter saw St. Denis paired up with a new comedy, and Reggie Dinkins started promisingly, building from St. Denis in its timeslot premiere and maintaining around 90% retention for the next couple weeks. Earlier in the winter, The Wall had a brief 9/8c run, where it helped things get truly horrifying for Brilliant Minds. The show's final six episodes ended up getting kicked to summer. (This three-hour lineup never actually aired together, as Wall and Minds were done by early February.)
spring
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | The Voice | The Hunting Party | 83 | ||||
| 99 | 99 | 49 | |||||
| 2025-26 | St. Denis Medical | The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins | The Voice | 82 (-1%) | |||
| 102 (+3%) | 83 (-16%) | 76 (+3%) | |||||
| 93 (-7%) | 76 (-23%) | 76 (+55%) | |||||
| VsAvg | -23% | -37% | -9% | -25% | |||
| Rank | 20/27 | 23/27 | 18/27 | 22/27 | |||
Buoyed by a season high 0.38 (127 Plus) at the start of the spring window, St. Denis posted a third straight period above the league average, despite going below the number in its last three weeks. Dinkins had a couple bad results mixed in with some respectable ones. And The Voice moved to a 9/8c start for its spring cycle, leading to another big drop in the ratings.
Rating the Ratings (about grades)
| Name | Lo | Avg | Hi | y2y | Plus | Label | Plusy2y | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| St. Denis Medical | 0.2 | 0.31 | 0.4 | +1% | 103 | solid | +7% | detail |
| The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins | 0.2 | 0.38 | 1.4 | 127 | hit | detail | ||
| The Voice Fall* | 0.2 | 0.28 | 0.4 | -36% | 94 | marginal | -32% | detail |
| The Wall | 0.1 | 0.16 | 0.2 | 53 | flop | |||
| The Voice Spring* | 0.2 | 0.24 | 0.3 | -35% | 82 | marginal | -31% | detail |
| Brilliant Minds | 0.1 | 0.14 | 0.2 | -38% | 48 | flop | -35% | detail |
St. Denis Medical: For a sophomore that could've slumped, this was one of the most impressive scripted showings of the season, narrowly up in raw numbers without any real "excuses" to explain it. It did get off the air early in April, but it only aired a couple episodes later than that last year, and it faced the NFL, American Idol, a strong comedy on CBS, and just kept on trucking. Grade: A.
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins: Averaged an 89 Plus in just Monday episodes. After a good start, down the stretch it was a mix of decent showings and some red flags, and it didn't really impress in its finale leading off the 8/7c hour. Overall, it's no St. Denis, but it probably earned the renewal. Grade: B-.
The Voice Fall: It certainly wasn't helped by getting kicked out of the 8/7c hour, but that only affected six weeks of this season, and the declines were already quite substantial before that happened. It's hard to make the case the average would've been much above 100 even with the usual scheduling. That's a major step down for a show that seemed to have stabilized the last couple years. However, it's interesting to note that in the early weeks when it was also airing on Tuesday, the Tuesday episodes did quite a bit better than the Monday ones. Coupled with how awful CBS looked on this night in the fall specifically, it makes me wonder if there's some Big Data shenanigan that depressed this night in that period. Grade: D+.
The Voice Spring: Same huge drop as the fall season. Scheduling-wise, I'm more forgiving with this one since it faced American Idol and had 9/8c starts (with two-hour episodes that aired in the 10/9c hour) for the whole season. Ultimately comedies + The Voice broke even with last year's Voice + Hunting Party, which was a bit more palatable for NBC. Grade: C-.
Brilliant Minds: I thought this had a little more hope than Watson coming into the season, but they ended up in the same place during the fall, and Minds got much worse by the winter. It ultimately ended with the increasingly rare yanking from the sked. Given how disastrous The Voice's fall ratings were, I still couldn't quite pull the trigger on an F. In the fall, its retention was not even that much worse than last year, which is really saying something about how hard The Voice fell. Grade: D-.
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 NBC 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 NBC Monday.
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