The news that emanated yesterday from CBS management should have simply been considered surprising. It’s not easy to generate what by most conventional standards is considered a hit these days, so at least my eyebrows were raised when I saw stories like this from the venerable Rick (THE HOLLYWOOD RE-)Porter:
CBS is cutting the ranks of its FBI agents. The network has canceled FBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International. The two shows will end their runs in the spring after six and four seasons, respectively. The flagship series, which is in the midst of a multi-season order taking it through the 2026-27 season, will remain at CBS.
The cancellations come as something of a surprise, even though neither series was part of a sizable renewal announcement CBS made in February. Both International and Most Wanted continue to put up decent ratings for CBS. Though neither brings in as large an audience as the flagship series, they rank among the top 25 shows (excluding live sports) on network TV in total viewers this season. Each averages about 7.5 million viewers after a week of cross-platform viewing, according to Nielsen.
It’s those facts that might explain why other pundits are dropping opinion-inclusive versions of this news at a dizzying rate, including CINEMABLEND’s Laura Hurley:
The primetime block has been set ever since International premiered back in 2021. Both spinoffs have undergone significant cast changes over the years, with Most Wanted currently only retaining two original cast members and International unceremoniously losing leading man Luke Kleintank at the end of Season 3. I personally was worried about FBI: International after news started to circulate of a New York-set spinoff that would likely be less expensive to produce than the series set in Budapest and filming across Europe, and considered that perhaps one of the shows would be cancelled to make way for FBI: CIA, but I didn’t expect both to get the axe. Per Variety, Most Wanted has won the 10 p.m. ET time slot for every episode of the current Season 6, while International generally comes in first or second in the 9 p.m. ET time slot on Tuesdays.
And TV INSIDER’s Amanda Bell conveyed some even more expressions of aghast:
The TV procedural world was upended on Tuesday (March 4) afternoon when the news came down that not one but two fan favorites would be given the sudden kibosh by their network. Fans reacted to the news with immediate shock on social media: “That really sucks those were great shows,” wrote one fan on X (formerly Twitter). “This is awful news,” another added. “I’m sorry what do you mean THEY CANCELLED FBI INT??!! mw got kind of boring but INTERNATIONAL?!!” another person wrote in response to the news.
Look, there are more than likely some very solid business reasons for this. Bell noted this factoid just before she messaged the fan rants:
Per Deadline, the news came after “difficult” negotiations with the Dick Wolf shows’ production company, Universal Television, and the in-the-works spinoff FBI: CIA is still in development.
And when you couple this with the informed observation Hurley expressed about the cost of a European-based series that at best has been the popularity equivalent of LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT–and lacks the kind of direct international network support that has allowed similar efforts to be produced outside the traditional US-centric focus of Wolf, who has created two whole night franchises for his partner’s networks with both L&O and what is now known as ONE CHICAGO, it’s somewhat easier to take a breath and chalk this up to yet another example of economics and politics winning out over popularity.
It’s not the first time CBS chose to renew shows that they had full control versus others. No other than Shawn Ryan knows that fact of life cold. In 2009 his decently performing CBS procedural THE UNIT (which, like FBI: MW, had just completed its fourth season) was axed just as his partners at 20th TV were preparing to market its reruns, with the show that pretty much paralleled its ratings, COLD CASE, getting a somewhat surprising pickup. Of course, COLD CASE was produced and distributed by sibling division Paramount Television. Ryan took up his own cause to convince 2oth to market the 69 episodes anyway, and even picked up a little help in the process (ahem-moi). There was just enough tonnage for it to be considered viable and the wise choice was made not to limit sales to an exclusive buyer. In just about every deployment, it punched above its weight of nominal expectations and at one point was sold to four different networks concurrent to broadcast syndication.
In more recent times, during his association with Sony, his S.W.A.T. was axed not once but twice by the current crop of CBS executives, once again with more than adequate ratings at the expense of shows that happened to be fully under CBS’ control. I was directly involved in the myriad restructurings of Sony’s participation levels even in its earlier years, complex and often heated back-and-forths that became practically an annual struggle. More recently, he earned a supposedly final seventh season by taking full advantage of an emotional and yes, race-referencing blitz by star Shemar Moore (as well as the underwhelming performance of another bubble show from someone other than a CBS-owned company, which then resulted in a pickup for an eighth season that recently replaced BLUE BLOODS as the Friday night coda show and is still in contention for a ninth–despite having somewhat weaker numbers than either of the cancelled FBI series.
All this is being played out amidst some very tumultuous times at CBS, which has some new sheriffs chafing at the bit to officially take the reins. And as we’re also learning this week, in some cases they may already have. Yes, we went to THE NEW YORK POST’s Alexandra Steigrad to learn it, but full credit goes to STATUS’ dogged Oliver Darcy for dropping this reality check onto this powder keg:
Skydance Media executive Jeff Shell pressured CBS News brass to release the “60 Minutes” transcript ahead of his company’s merger with the network’s parent Paramount Global, according to a report.
Shell, who is slated to grab the reins as president of the merged company, pushed CBS News chief Wendy McMahon and “60 Minutes” boss Bill Owens to release the transcript of the sitdown with then-Vice President Kamala Harris amid calls from then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, Status reported Tuesday. Shell convened the meeting last October while Trump was making claims that “60 Minutes” “deceptively edited” the Harris interview to benefit his democratic challenger, but McMahon and Owens pushed back, persuading the exec that folding under political rpessure would be a bad move. The meeting left McMahon and Owens shaken by Shell’s insertion into newsroom decision-making given that the merger had yet to close, the report said. They were also on edge that the former NBCUniversal CEO felt that the Tiffany Network should simply appease Trump, as they argued that there was no foul play on the Harris interview.
That all happened six months ago, and I personally know Shell is not a patient man. I also know he’s the adult in the room alongside the creative and theatrically-inclined nepobaby David Ellison at Skydance, being brought in as the global TV expert who successfully lead teams at Disney, FOX and eventually rose to the top of NBCU. And you do know where Ellison pere has been lately, right? Maybe you need CNN’s Clare Duffy’s story, dropped one day into Trump 2.0, to remind you:
Three top tech firms on Tuesday announced that they will create a new company, called Stargate, to grow artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison appeared at the White House Tuesday afternoon alongside President Donald Trump to announce the company, which Trump called the “largest AI infrastructure project in history.” The companies will invest $100 billion in the project to start, with plans to pour up to $500 billion into Stargate in the coming years. The project is expected to create 100,000 US jobs, Trump said.
And since then, the FBI has come under the stewardship of toadies such as Kash Patel and Dan Bongino. Who have openly called for the organization to be radically downsized and refocused, as FIRSTPOST’s team of intrepid reporters reminded just before Patel’s confirmation hearings began:
In the most notable iteration of his distaste of the agency he is now set to head, Patel once said he wanted to disband FBI and turn all of its agents and officers into policepersons. In a podcast last year, Patel said that if he were the head of FBI, he would “shut down” the agency’s headquarters building and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state’”. “And I’d take the seven thousand employees that work in that building and send them across America to go chase down criminals. Go be cops,” said Patel in the podcast, according to Associated Press.
Yeah, perhaps it’s mere coincidence that an FBI-labeled show that celebrates shpotzseering around the world to chase down criminals has been cancelled. Or another that focuses on a select list of top-tier croos rather than volume is also going away. I suspect they may not be on the Ellison’s playlists–or many of their friends’.
Funny how Amy Reisenbach–yet another female in charge of a CBS division–hasn’t publicly commented on yesterday’s news. A point all the more worth considering in light of the observation from ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’s Ryan Coleman:
(T)he simultaneous cancelation of both FBI series comes as a surprise, given the popularity of CBS’s Tuesday night schedule, which features new episodes of each FBI franchise property back-to-back. That Tuesday night programming gimmick earned CBS the most-watched and highest-rated program on the Tuesday TV schedule last spring.
“The All-FBI Tuesday is a powerful force to be reckoned with on our primetime schedule,” CBS Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach, said last April, when the network announced that all three shows would be returning for more episodes. Now it’s just Tuesday.
Since it’s clear than Coleman and some other more reactionary types have some questions, I’d offer that they might want to do some further digging akin to what Darcy did–ideally not behind a paywall. Maybe try and get Reisenbach, if not Shell, on the record to assure that FBI: CIA indeed has a fighting chance for a pickup. The CIA could use the good pub. 
After all, this is the face of the current series that features one of its agents.
Until next time…