The Breakdown: CBS Friday in 2025-26 (Sheriff Country, Fire Country, Boston Blue)

It's time for a journey through the CBS Friday schedule in 2025-26...


fall

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2024-25	S.W.A.T.		S.W.A.T.	Fire Country		Fire Country	Blue Bloods		Blue Bloods	97
	2024-25	95		95	105		105	91			91	97
2025-26	Sheriff Country		Sheriff Country	Fire Country		Fire Country	Boston Blue		Boston Blue	67 (-31%)
	2025-26	81 (-15%)		80.5558805190732	61 (-42%)		61 (-42%)	58 (-36%)			58 (-36%)	66.7202418576703
VsAvg	+11%		0.114944582494558	-16%		-0.161573733752253	-20%		-0.199464787025959	-8%
Rank	10/27		10/27	22/27		22/27	21/27		21/27	20/27

Another night, another debacle for the CBS scripted department. After three years above league average in the very same timeslot, Fire Country suddenly hovered around the 60 mark throughout its fall run, and 10/9c newbie Boston Blue plummeted well behind the entire run of Blue Bloods in that timeslot. Fire spin-off Sheriff Country was somewhat spared in the more favorable 8/7c hour, posting a MacGyver-esque performance but trailing recent S.W.A.T. ratings in the hour.

winter

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2024-25	NCIS: Sydney		NCIS: Sydney	Fire Country		Fire Country	S.W.A.T.		S.W.A.T.	90
	2024-25	85		85	102		102	83			83	90
2025-26	Sheriff Country		Sheriff Country	Fire Country		Fire Country	Boston Blue		Boston Blue	61 (-33%)
	2025-26	70 (-18%)		70.1211809699705	60 (-41%)		60 (-41%)	52 (-38%)			52 (-38%)	60.6603867121173
VsAvg	-6%		-0.0552242576753439	-21%		-0.208493730129605	-32%		-0.319696759575664	-20%
Rank	21/27		21/27	23/27		23/27	23/27		23/27	23/27

Like the other CBS scripted lineups, the winter window consisted of only a couple original episodes post-Olympics. All these shows looked quite bad here because one of those weeks was a huge stinker (0.15/0.14/0.15). Sheriff and Fire bounced back quite a bit the next week (0.27/0.22).

spring

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2024-25	NCIS: Sydney		NCIS: Sydney	Fire Country		Fire Country	S.W.A.T.		S.W.A.T.	87
	2024-25	76		76	105		105	79			79	87
2025-26	Sheriff Country		Sheriff Country	Fire Country		Fire Country	Boston Blue		Boston Blue	73 (-16%)
	2025-26	83 (+10%)		83.477596392822	75 (-28%)		75 (-28%)	59 (-26%)			59 (-26%)	72.5327559768742
VsAvg	+34%		0.339824680552531	+14%		0.136209124494205	-16%		-0.161003473080964	+9%
Rank	4/27		4/27	9/27		9/27	24/27		24/27	10/27

As with quite a few lineups this season, the spring brought some improvement, with Sheriff Country managing to muscle past last year's NCIS: Sydney, but the declines in the last two hours were still quite hefty.

Rating the Ratings (about grades)

Name	Lo	Avg	Hi	y2y	Plus	Label	Plusy2y	Results
Sheriff Country	0.1	0.25	0.3		82	hit(Fri)		detail
Fire Country	0.1	0.21	0.3	-37%	70	solid(Fri)	-33%	detail
Boston Blue	0.1	0.18	0.2		59	flop		detail

Sheriff Country: It was definitely CBS' least bad hour of the night, but how much of that is due to the 8/7c hour being so favorable? After all, Fire Country hit a 0.30 on premiere night when it was at 8/7c launching Sheriff, then Sheriff was well below that for most of the season. I don't think it's a stretch to say the ratings would flip if the two shows flipped, and I'd probably have gone with something like C- if Fire had an 82 at 8/7c and C if Sheriff had a 70 at 9/8c. But that's just speculation so I can't actually pull the trigger on giving them those grades. Grade: B-.

Fire Country: As staggering as Matlock if not more so, albeit for kind of an opposite reason. Matlock was a young show that seemed to have immediate momentum, while Fire Country had a long-established level and just suddenly fell off a cliff. In this case, the show fell not only below its own history but the entire Hawaii Five-0 and Magnum P.I. runs, and we're suddenly back in CSI: NY territory from the early 2010s. I sort of wanted to be kinder because the spring looked a little more hopeful; Matlock couldn't even say that much. But the "hopeful" period was still -28% y2y. Grade: D.

Boston Blue: Not quite as harsh with this one because it's a new show and I kinda doubt it was gonna pick up right where Blue Bloods left off even under normal circumstances. Still, it fell significantly behind what CBS has been doing with Numb3rs and Blue Bloods here for the last two decades. 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 Friday: 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 Friday.