It's time for a journey through the ABC Wednesday schedule in 2025-26...
fall
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | The Golden Bachelorette | Abbott Elementary | What Would You Do? | 80 | |||
| 98 | 96 | 45 | |||||
| 98 | 97 | ||||||
| 2025-26 | Shifting Gears | Abbott Elementary | The Golden Bachelor | Shark Tank | 76 (-5%) | ||
| 116 (+19%) | 101 (+3%) | 67 (-30%) | 51 (+14%) | ||||
| 109 (+11%) | |||||||
| VsAvg | 0% | -50% | -34% | -29% | |||
| Rank | 13/27 | 27/27 | 25/27 | 26/27 | |||
Shifting Gears came into season two having hovered around the league average for the last month of its rookie season, but it was able to get back into more solid territory during the fall. Abbott Elementary held onto that audience pretty well for the most part, but had a couple notable stinkers in the last two episodes of this window (0.26 and 0.23 following a 0.41/0.32 from Shifting). Meanwhile, the Golden editions of the Bachelor/ette franchise completely fell apart with a move to one-hour 9/8c editions, and Shark Tank had a brutal start in its latest journey away from Friday.
winter
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | Shifting Gears | Abbott Elementary | Celebrity Jeopardy! | What Would You Do? | 91 | ||
| 130 | 124 | 85 | 61 | ||||
| 127 | |||||||
| 2025-26 | Shifting Gears | Abbott Elementary | Dirty Talk: When Daytime Talk Shows Ruled TV | Shark Tank | 85 (-7%) | ||
| 133 (+2%) | 130 (+5%) | 67 (-21%) | 56 (-9%) | ||||
| 131 (+3%) | |||||||
| VsAvg | +30% | -44% | -26% | -14% | |||
| Rank | 5/27 | 26/27 | 22/27 | 19/27 | |||
A nice winter bounce arrived for Shifting Gears, which vaulted into hit territory for four of its five episodes after the new year. And it came even bigger for Abbott Elementary, which built on the last two episodes of Shifting (0.40 and 0.42 following 0.36/0.39 Shifting). Docu-series filler at 9/8c managed to tie The Golden Bachelor's average...
spring
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | The Conners | Abbott Elementary | Celebrity Jeopardy! | What Would You Do? | 74 | ||
| 99 | 106 | 73 | 46 | ||||
| 102 | |||||||
| 2025-26 | Scrubs | Abbott Elementary | The Greatest Average American | Shark Tank | 88 (+19%) | ||
| 140 (+42%) | 122 (+15%) | 72 (-2%) | 60 (+31%) | ||||
| 131 (+28%) | |||||||
| VsAvg | +46% | -33% | -16% | -2% | |||
| Rank | 2/27 | 21/27 | 15/27 | 14/27 | |||
Spring belonged to the revival of Scrubs, which eked out a megahit average for its double premiere during the winter window (220/184) and held up well from there, never dropping out of hit territory during season one. Abbott followed it to significantly improved spring ratings as well. The last two hours saw a minor improvement as game show The Greatest Average American took over the 9/8c hour.
Rating the Ratings (about grades)
| Name | Lo | Avg | Hi | y2y | Plus | Label | Plusy2y | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shifting Gears | 0.3 | 0.37 | 0.4 | -7% | 123 | solid | -1% | detail |
| Scrubs* | 0.4 | 0.47 | 0.7 | 157 | big hit | detail | ||
| Abbott Elementary* | 0.2 | 0.35 | 0.4 | -2% | 116 | solid | +4% | detail |
| The Golden Bachelor | 0.2 | 0.20 | 0.3 | 67 | flop | detail | ||
| The Greatest Average American | 0.2 | 0.23 | 0.3 | 77 | marginal | detail | ||
| Shark Tank* | 0.1 | 0.17 | 0.2 | -38% | 56 | flop | -35% | detail |
Shifting Gears: Could make the argument that this show holding up so well was just as surprising as St. Denis Medical on NBC. I really did not see it building on last year's front-loaded winter average in Plus. This doesn't seem like the kind of show that should be getting held for midseason, but two-hour comedy blocks are apparently illegal nowadays (or Tim Allen may just want a limited order, I dunno). Grade: A-.
Scrubs: This show started below the revival premieres of Will and Grace (274) and Night Court (230/220), but it held up much better, as both those shows had gotten below league average by the end of season one and Scrubs was nowhere close to that low. However, those shows had 16 episodes and Scrubs only had nine. If you look at where those two shows were around episode nine-ish, you can maybe make the case this show isn't that far ahead of their trajectories, but it was definitely at least somewhat ahead. Anyway, I can't punish it for something that hasn't happened yet, just saying that we haven't seen a huge sample size. For now, it's looked great, especially since the show's initial run was never really a strong linear performer. Grade: A.
Abbott Elementary: It was yet another ride on the Abbott Elementary roller coaster, somehow ending up with yet another Plus average in the 110s. It was kinda meh in the fall after Shifting, great in the winter also after Shifting, and it did well after Scrubs for the most part. This was probably as good as it's ever gotten for this show in terms of having strong lead-ins all season, but it did what it was supposed to do (other than those two weak eps in December). Grade: B+.
Shark Tank: As NCIS: Sydney and others can attest, Friday 8/7c is actually a pretty good timeslot now, and moving to a weeknight 10/9c hour is a major downgrade. That probably goes even moreso for a show like Shark Tank that has such long-established roots on Friday. While it seemed to get a little less dire as the season went on, it was still a poor showing overall. The show already seemed to be petering out on Friday, and this only exacerbated it. 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 ABC Wednesday: 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 ABC Wednesday.
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