The series premiere of CBS‘ Marshals nearly tripled its audience over 28 days, helping the network sustain its broadcast dominance for another season it seems.
The first episode of the Luke Grimes-led Yellowstone spinoff has now amassed 26.5M viewers across broadcast and streaming since debuting on March 1, per Nielsen Big Data + Panel 28-day measurements. It is one of eight CBS series to deliver more than 10M viewers upon its premiere or midseason return.
In fact, CBS has six of the top 20 most-watched series among all broadcast and streaming competition, Nielsen data shows. According to those rankings, Marshals is the second most-watched show on TV after Stranger Things. See the chart below.
“This is my favorite slide, because it’s the clearest proof point that our strategy is working,” George Cheeks, Chair of TV Media at Skydance-owned Paramount, told reporters on Wednesday. “Our hits compete with and often exceed the total audiences for many of streaming’s biggest shows.”
Nielsen data shows that the Marshals premiere put up 13M viewers on streaming alone. That, along with Sheriff Country and CIA are among the top shows on Paramount+ with 40% of their audience coming from streaming, per Paramount. Speaking of streaming, Cheeks also revealed that CBS series average a streaming audience that skews 15 to 20 years younger than on broadcast this season.
“Bottom line, over the past six years, we’ve transformed CBS from a singular broadcast network to a multi-platform content powerhouse, and these wins speak to that,” Cheeks added.
Tracker is also still going strong in its third season, securing 16.4M viewers in 28 days for its midseason return. CIA, Matlock, Sheriff Country, and Ghosts are also among the top 20 shows on TV. While they barely missed the list, Survivor 50 and NCIS also drew 10M+ viewers with their first episodes of the year.
Together, Marshals and CIA are the top two new series on broadcast TV this season.
Marshals premiered last month to 9.52M viewers (Live+SD Panel + Big Data), already making it the most watched new series premiere of the 2025-26 broadcast season and marking CBS’ biggest scripted premiere without a direct or indirect football lead-in since FBI debuted with 10.09M viewers on Sept. 25, 2018. The series premiere also managed an impressive 99% retention from the first half-hour to the second.
Marshals was also up from the high mark set by the Season 5 premiere of Yellowstone on Paramount Network, which drew 8.8M L+SD viewers. It was the most-watched broadcast series of the week, followed by two other CBS Sunday programs: Tracker and 60 Minutes.
It’s a bit too early for CBS to claim victory over the entire broadcast season, but the network is likely to tout these wins even more down the line as more data is available. Last year, CBS claimed an early victory at the end of April 2025 as the most-watched broadcast network for the 17th consecutive season.
However, it’s looking like NBC will actually take the broadcast crown this year thanks to the network’s “legendary February” lineup. Primetime sports are up 82% on NBC this year, per Nielsen.