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Some of the most precious television real estate comes immediately after the National Football League\u2019s season finale, one of the few programs to still corral a giant audience.<\/p>\n
The network that airs the Super Bowl wants to retain as many of those viewers \u2014 115 million people last year \u2014 as possible with the postgame slot. It has been a powerful tool to debut new shows, as CBS will do on Sunday with \u201cTracker,\u201d a crime drama about the hunt for missing people that stars Justin Hartley, and it has also showcased already popular ones, such as NBC did in 1996 with \u201cFriends.\u201d<\/p>\n
Either strategy can prove effective.<\/p>\n
\u201c<\/em>It\u2019s really a year-by-year basis when you have the Super Bowl and to think, \u2018What are the different weapons you have to deploy?\u2019\u201d said Amy Reisenbach, the president of CBS Entertainment.<\/p>\n For nearly two decades, the Super Bowl has cycled among Fox, NBC and CBS. (In 2027, ABC will air its first Super Bowl since 2006.) \u201cThere isn\u2019t really any other platform like it on TV,\u201d<\/em> Reisenbach said, adding, \u201cIt\u2019s a huge opportunity to get eyeballs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Networks plan out the postgame slot about a year ahead of time, said Dan Harrison, the executive vice president of program planning and content strategy at Fox Entertainment.<\/p>\n CBS chose \u201cTracker\u201d in May, Reisenbach said, after executives viewed the pilot episode and felt it could appeal across demographics because of Hartley\u2019s popularity with both men and women. The decision to debut a new show follows the strategy CBS used for \u201cUndercover Boss\u201d<\/a> (2010) and for its two most recent Super Bowl lead-outs, \u201cThe World\u2019s Best\u201d (2019) and \u201cThe Equalizer\u201d (2021).<\/p>\n The results varied. \u201cThe World\u2019s Best\u201d garnered 22.2 million viewers and was not renewed for a second season. \u201cUndercover Boss\u201d amassed nearly 39 million viewers and ran for 11 seasons.<\/p>\n Fox has more recently used its post-Super Bowl slot to highlight shows that have a built-in audience. Last year, it debuted the second season of the Gordon Ramsay cooking show \u201cNext Level Chef\u201d; in 2020 it opened the third season of \u201cThe Masked Singer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYou want to make sure that you\u2019re comfortable serving viewers something that they already know that they like and something that advertisers want to be in,\u201d said Harrison, who previously worked for CBS and NBC. \u201cThat single episode will be the highest-rated entertainment telecast of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n Even though the first episode of \u201cThe Equalizer\u201d drew 20.4 million viewers after the Super Bowl in 2021, CBS still chose to use this year\u2019s spot for \u201cTracker.\u201d The network will debut the fourth season of \u201cThe Equalizer,\u201d along with much of its returning lineup, in the week after the game.<\/p>\n CBS kicked off new seasons of the reality show \u201cSurvivor\u201d in 2001 and 2004, and NBC aired a special one-hour episode of the hit sitcom \u201cThe Office\u201d in 2009.<\/p>\n But NBC\u2019s placement of \u201cFriends\u201d after the Super Bowl in 1996 is perhaps the most successful use of this strategy. The network elongated that episode to an hour and packed it with major guest stars like Julia Roberts and Brooke Shields. Almost 53 million viewers tuned in, the highest-rated post-Super Bowl show ever.<\/p>\n \u201cThey made an event of a show that was already big, which was amazing and it just supercharged it,\u201d said Andrew Goldman, an adjunct instructor at New York University\u2019s Tisch School of the Arts and a former HBO executive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n While networks typically want to capture as broad of an audience as possible after the Super Bowl, sometimes they take risks.<\/p>\n In 1999, Fox debuted the adult animation show \u201cFamily Guy,\u201d which was canceled after its third season for poor ratings before being rejuvenated on Cartoon Network\u2019s Adult Swim programming, and then bouncing back to Fox, where its run continues.<\/p>\n In 2022, an overlap of global sporting events allowed NBC to air the Winter Olympics in Beijing directly after the Super Bowl. That Olympics broadcast received 21.2 million viewers, but Goldman thinks that decision was unwise.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen there\u2019s an opportunity to introduce people to a new creative, you should do it to create a collective zeitgeist,\u201d Goldman said. \u201cPeople the next day will talk about, \u2018Hey did you see the Super Bowl,\u2019 and then, \u2018Hey, did you see that new show?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Even platforms without N.F.L. television rights have tried to capitalize on the interest around the Super Bowl. In 2018, Netflix aired an ad during the game for the previously unannounced science fiction film \u201cThe Cloverfield Paradox,\u201d<\/a> which it released for streaming after the Lombardi Trophy was lifted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nNew Shows<\/h2>\n
Returning Shows<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n