Published Jun 20, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT
Laura Hurley has been writing about the entertainment industry for more than twelve years, after a decade as a content producer and editor at CinemaBlend after writing for WhatCulture and Examiner. Attending events like SCAD TVfest and San Diego Comic-Con over the course of her career, she has been immersed in the world of network, streaming, and cable TV.
Franchises have produced some of the biggest and longest-running hits on network television, and CBS is the home of several. The NCIS TV universe, which technically started with a backdoor pilot on JAG in 2003, has been running for more than two decades, while the Fire Country world expanded to include Sheriff Country. The FBI franchise seemed like one of the network’s most solid, with the original series doing well and spinoffs FBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International mostly keeping up. CBS cancelling the spinoffs in 2025 ultimately backfired, and no fewer than four ongoing shows have suffered.
CBS had a good thing going in the 2024-2025 TV schedule, with Tuesday nights made up of Dick Wolf’s FBI, FBI: International, and FBI: Most Wanted. While the two spinoffs didn’t perform quite as well as the parent series, starring Missy Peregrym and Zeeko Zaki, the network’s FBI Tuesdays had been a staple of the primetime lineup going back to 2020.
Meanwhile, Monday nights belonged to another franchise, with NCIS and NCIS: Origins all airing back-to-back. NCIS: Sydney had a spot on Friday nights. Like FBI, the NCIS spinoffs weren’t earning as large of audiences as the original show, but everything seemed to be doing well.
Apparently, everything was not doing so well that CBS wanted to keep the lineup going into the 2025-2026 season. Not only were FBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International cancelled after six and four seasons (respectively), but the network switched FBI to Mondays and all three NCIS shows to Tuesdays. The premiere of CIA, starring Nick Gehlfuss and Tom Ellis, did expand the FBI universe again, but not soon enough to fix the overall viewership ahead of FBI season 9.
CBS’ biggest winners in audience size from the 2024-2025 TV season were Tracker, Matlock, Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, and Ghosts, according to Variety, but all three FBI shows were still in the network’s Top 15 most-watched shows on average. NCIS and NCIS: Origins were in the Top 15 as well, although NCIS: Sydney came in at No. 17.
None of them were earning *Tracker-*level numbers, but FBI Tuesdays and NCIS Mondays seemed solid. The audience numbers for the 2025-2026 TV season (via Variety) were very different, and the biggest variable was certainly the cancellations of FBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International.
On top of losing the spinoffs that created a full night of FBI action, the move from Tuesdays at 8 p.m. to Mondays at 9 p.m. caused FBI to lose nearly two million viewers. In fact, CBS’ Mondays were so disappointing in the first half of the 2025-2026 season that the other three shows (The Neighborhood, DMV, and Watson) have all been cancelled, and CBS’ fall 2026 schedule has retooled Monday nights.
NCIS switching slots with FBI didn’t pay off for that series either. The show had been doing well on Mondays at 9 p.m. for four full seasons before being swapped over to Tuesdays last fall, leading to a drop of more than half a million viewers. NCIS: Origins’ move to Tuesdays came with an even larger drop of nearly two million. In a surprise twist, NCIS: Sydney actually did better on Fridays than when it was grouped with the rest of the franchise on Tuesday nights.
Ahead of its finales, CBS has officially unveiled their confirmed fall 2026 schedule, which is a mix of established franchises and new offerings.
Both NCIS: Sydney and Origins’ totals for the 2025-2026 season were lower than FBI: International and FBI: Most Wanted’s were in those Tuesday night time slots the year before. The numbers paint a clear picture: CBS was earning more viewers with NCIS Mondays and FBI Tuesdays than it was after the cancellations of International and Most Wanted. CIA’s much-hyped arrival on Mondays to join FBI may have been a factor in FBI reaching nearly nine million.
Ultimately, the cancellations of FBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International cost CBS two of its Top 15 most-watched shows, and the subsequent schedule changes resulted in smaller audiences for FBI as well as the full NCIS lineup.
CBS did not just cancel the two FBI spinoffs due to the sizes of their audiences. In fact, FBI: International and FBI: Most Wanted had larger audiences in their final seasons than several of the renewed shows did. Amy Reisenbach, President of CBS Entertainment, explained the decision (via TVLine):
Obviously we love working with Dick [Wolf] and we’re so excited to be bringing [the new FBI franchise expansion] CIA onto the schedule. But going back to what we just said [about The Equalizer’s cancellation], we have to be fiscally responsible, and ultimately those deals and the shows just weren’t penciling out for us for an economic perspective.
The reason for the cancellations came down to money, but Reisenbach didn’t go into detail about what made Most Wanted and International too pricy to continue. It’s never been clear how filming in Budapest and across Europe affected International’s costs, compared to both FBI and Most Wanted filming in New York. Both shows had large ensemble casts as well.
Starting the shows back up again and reassembling the casts seems much more expensive than it would have been to just keep them going in the first place, and CBS has filled the fall schedule with new shows. It’s unlikely that FBI: Most Wanted or FBI: International will ever return as solo series.
That said, FBI could very well bring back characters from the cancelled show. Nina, played by Shantel VanSanten on Most Wanted, appeared in the original series’ eighth season. Considering the disappointing way that International ended, FBI taking an episode or two to provide closure for the Fly Team might be the best that fans could hope for. CIA is another possibility, since crossovers with FBI firmly established that they share a TV universe.
FBI, FBI: Most Wanted, FBI: International
First TV Show
Missy Peregrym, Zeeko Zaki, Jeremy Sisto, Alana de la Garza, John Boyd, Dylan McDermott, Roxy Sternberg, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Luke Kleintank, Heida Reed, Vinessa Vidotto, Carter Redwood
Latest TV Show
FBI: International
First Episode Air Date