It's time for a journey through the CBS Wednesday schedule in 2025-26...
fall
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | Survivor | The Summit | 142 | ||||
| 210 | 73 | ||||||
| 210 | 142 | 73 | |||||
| 2025-26 | Survivor | The Amazing Race | 152 (+7%) | ||||
| 212 (+1%) | 93 (+26%) | ||||||
| 212 (+1%) | 152 (+7%) | 93 (+26%) | |||||
| VsAvg | +75% | +35% | 0% | +40% | |||
| Rank | 1/27 | 3/27 | 13/27 | 2/27 | |||
Survivor kept plugging away at its low-megahit levels in the fall, while The Amazing Race returned to resurrect the second half of the evening.
winter
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | Hollywood Squares | The Price Is Right At Night | Raid the Cage | 87 | |||
| 109 | 93 | 59 | |||||
| 2025-26 | Hollywood Squares | The Price Is Right At Night | Harlan Coben's Final Twist (R) | 69 (-21%) | |||
| 77 (-30%) | 92 (-1%) | 37 (-38%) | |||||
| VsAvg | -10% | -6% | -55% | -22% | |||
| Rank | 15/27 | 15/27 | 27/27 | 25/27 | |||
After being above league average for most of its Thursday/Wednesday eps last year, Hollywood Squares never once managed a 100 in winter 2026. But The Price Is Right remained unfazed at 9/8c.
spring
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | Survivor | The Amazing Race | 162 | ||||
| 224 | 101 | ||||||
| 224 | 162 | 101 | |||||
| 2025-26 | Survivor | America's Culinary Cup | Hollywood Squares | 193 (+19%) | |||
| 317 (+42%) | 82 (-19%) | 43 (-58%) | |||||
| 317 (+42%) | 200 (+23%) | 62 (-39%) | |||||
| VsAvg | +171% | +93% | -25% | +91% | |||
| Rank | 1/27 | 1/27 | 23/27 | 1/27 | |||
The 50th season of Survivor took the ratings through the roof, ending up with a Plus average well above all of its own history and even barely outrating the peak American Idol seasons. But the enormous lead-in was wasted on yet another struggling unscripted lead-out, as America's Culinary Cup did much worse than The Amazing Race and barely better than The Summit, despite having 100 more points of lead-in juice.
Rating the Ratings (about grades)
| Name | Lo | Avg | Hi | y2y | Plus | Label | Plusy2y | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Survivor Fall* | 0.5 | 0.63 | 0.8 | -6% | 212 | megahit | 0% | detail |
| Survivor Spring* | 0.8 | 0.95 | 1.1 | +36% | 317 | megahit | +44% | detail |
| The Price Is Right At Night | 0.2 | 0.31 | 0.4 | +0% | 102 | solid | +6% | |
| The Amazing Race Fall* | 0.2 | 0.27 | 0.4 | 92 | marginal | detail | ||
| America's Culinary Cup | 0.2 | 0.25 | 0.3 | 83 | marginal | detail | ||
| Hollywood Squares | 0.1 | 0.18 | 0.3 | -58% | 59 | flop | -55% | detail |
Survivor Fall: Even in Plus at its relatively high-end historical levels is good for Survivor, but it's pretty much expected at this point. Grade: B+.
Survivor Spring: Last year, I thought if everything broke right it could maybe beat the Plus averages from seasons one and two. Instead, it crushed them by more than 20%! In terms of individual episodes, nothing from this season was all that close to the season one finale (474) or the post-Super Bowl season two premiere (468), but the season 50 finale (367) exactly matched the next-highest rated episode, the 2004 post-Super Bowl premiere. The season two finale (331) would've been an above-average season 50 episode. Then you have everything from season 50 beating out all the other episodes in the history of the show. Pretty extraordinary! Grade: A+.
The Amazing Race Fall: A little weaker than the last few seasons which have aired in these 90-minute arrangements and were right around league average. Given the carnage at 10/9c across the board and with all the other Survivor lead-outs, it still shouldn't be taken for granted. Grade: B-.
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 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 CBS Wednesday.
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