Every Sunday, CBS shows Tracker and The Road are scheduled to air at a certain time yet are always delayed — but what has caused the consistent change?
Viewers have tuned in weekly to see Justin Hartley solve a new mystery at 8 p.m. with Watson following up at 9 p.m. and then Queen Latifah on The Equalizer at 10 p.m. Now Tracker is paired with Blake Shelton and Keith Urban‘s musical competition series.
The timing, however, is always pushed because CBS is home to football broadcasts. Since NFL games usually run long, this impacts the 60 Minutes special that always follows. As a result, everything else gets pushed back and, well, you get the idea.
Tracker was plagued with delays during its first season, due to live events like March Madness and the CMT Music Awards. The show still found a way to be coined the most-watched broadcast premiere since NCIS‘ final episode with Mark Harmon in September 2021. Its average viewership was reported to be 18.2 million per episode, according to Paramount+ and broadcast measurements.
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Variety‘s annual list of the year’s 100 most-watched primetime telecasts revealed that Tracker episodes earned 15 top spots. Despite making Us wait 11 weeks for new episodes, the second season dominated viewership with the season 2 premiere bringing in 8.3 million total viewers — a nearly 10 percent increase in viewership from the season 1 finale. The season 2 premiere also marked the show’s highest audience since the series debuted in February 2024 after the Super Bowl.
Tracker, which premiered in February 2024, is centered around a survivalist named Colter (Hartley) who travels the country helping to solve a variety of mysteries. Hartley, 48, recently spoke about how Tracker’s success has paved the way for more opportunities.
“It’s really the cool show now, right? So, we actually got really lucky. I feel like I blinked, all of a sudden woke up and it’s been 20 years. But I’ve been in this business long enough to have developed these relationships,” he told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month. “When you see the people on our show that are familiar faces and actors you know, like Jensen Ackles and my wife [Sofia Pernas], these are relationships I’ve had for a long time. I was really grateful I was able to do that.”
He continued: “I think they trusted me knowing I’m not going to call them and ask them to do something, or invite them to do something unless I think it’s really cool and fun and would be good for them as well. So we start off on that foot, and then this show became what it is. It’s huge. People think it’s cool and want to be a part of it, which is also nice because it allows you to get a bigger pool of talent.”
Ahead of the show’s season finale, Hartley promised to deliver some surprises.
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“You are going to get the last five episodes in a row. So, you’re getting five separate movies. We call them little movies. As we’re inching closer to the end of the season, we creep closer and closer to the mystery of what the hell happened to Colter’s father,” he teased. “How did he die? Was there in fact another man in the woods? Did he get pushed? Did he get killed? Was it an accident? What the hell is going on with that?”
Hartley confirmed there was already a possible story planned for season 3, adding, “Now we’re in new territory. We have a couple of ideas. One of these is that Colter has all of these skills — he’s a survivalist and he knows how to be alone, and he knows how to find people and he’s gifted in that regard. He’s a great listener.”
The actor concluded: “But it would be interesting, I think, to see him be set up. In other words, to see him using all those skills to run from the authorities, because you’ve been set up for whatever reason. I’d love to have all that tie into the family background, the government. So, we’ll see. We’ve been kicking that idea around. We have a lot of different stuff that we’re talking about. We have the underlying theme of what we’re going to do next year, while not really changing the direction of where our story is going.”
Tracker airs on CBS Sundays at 8 p.m. ET while The Road follows at 9 p.m. ET. New episodes stream the next day on Paramount+.
