TV Ratings Thursday, May 16, 2024
The final episodes of Young Sheldon drew a big crowd for CBS.
The comedy ended its seven-season fun Thursday night with 8.95 million viewers for its series finale, based on fast national ratings from Nielsen. That’s the biggest same-day audience for the show in four years — since its third season finale on April 30, 2020.
Young Sheldon ended with a pair of episodes, and the first drew almost as many viewers (8.82 million) at 8 p.m. ET/PT as the 8:30 p.m. finale. The two episodes rank second and third in same-day viewers among all scripted series this season, behind only the post-Super Bowl premiere of Tracker.
Young Sheldon came into Thursday averaging 7.03 million same-day viewers this season, making it the most-watched network comedy for the fifth straight season. Thursday’s episodes finished 25 percent and 27 percent above the same-day average.
CBS has an ongoing, 19-year run of having the most-watched comedy of the season on its airwaves. The streak began with the final season of Everybody Loves Raymond in 2004-05 and continued with Two and a Half Men and Young Sheldon’s predecessor, The Big Bang Theory. The latter three are all executive produced by Chuck Lorre.
This story will be updated with final ratings figures for Thursday when they become available.
