That’s Tracker
OK it’s Justin Hartley playing the lead character in Tracker, whose name is Colter Shaw.
Photo by Mike Taing/CBS
CBS premiered most of its regular lineup last week (Sunday shows Marshals and Tracker started Oct. 4), and it had a good week. Its series are the majority of the non-sports and news shows in the top of the same-day ratings. It will probably be like that for a good portion of the season, at least when CBS is fully up and running. For the past couple of years, the network has put most of its shows on an extended break in the winter (understandable vs. the Winter Olympics last season). We’ll see how they handle things come January.
We’ll get to the charts in a moment, but the biggest news of the past couple days have been layoffs at Netflix: The company announced Wednesday that it’s cutting a thousand employees, and earlier today — in a pretty surprising move — chief content officer Bela Bajaria was let go. She’ll be replaced by Peter Rice, a Brit who spent a long time at 20th Century Fox pre-Disney, then led Disney Entertainment for a few years after that merger.
Bajaria had been at Netflix for 10 years and became its head of series in 2020. She was promoted to chief content officer — the top of the org chart for the creative side, basically — in 2023. She’s credited with describing the sweet spot for Netflix programming as a “gourmet cheeseburger,” i.e., familiar things done well. You can argue whether A) Netflix has lived up to that in the past couple of years and B) whether that’s the right thing to aspire to. I’d say a qualified yes to B, since Netflix aspires to be a broadcaster in the “appealing to as many people as possible” sense.
The jury is more out on A — Bajaria replaced Cindy Holland as head of TV. Holland brought Stranger Things, Orange Is the New Black and other foundational shows to Netflix, and Shonda Rhimes moved her company there during her tenure. Bajaria had led local-language productions at Netflix before replacing Holland, and at that time, the company’s growth hinged more on regions outside North America. But it feels like the “gourmet” part of the formula has fallen to the side somewhat in recent years (with some obvious exceptions, most recently East of Eden).
Now? I don’t know. This week’s layoffs were the first large-scale ones at Netflix in four years, and as the company has chased YouTube-style engagement with video podcasts and creator content lately, it feels like it’s a little bit adrift. Rice is well-known and -respected in the industry, so that’s likely a signal that Netflix won’t go too far afield in trying to maintain and expand its position as the biggest subscription streaming service. But it’s a big shakeup.
Onto the weekly charts: Nielsen was a day behind its usual schedule this week on the linear ratings, which is why they’re coming to you on Thursday rather than Wednesday night. (Rather than double up here, I’ll send the streaming charts Friday morning U.S. time.) The non-sports and news chart I started last week has expanded to a top 15, which feels like a good number. Here’s the rundown.