As the 2024-2025 broadcast television season closes out, CBS has retained its lead as the most-watched network in daytime for the 39th season (since the 1986-1987 season) and has won an impressive 1,500 consecutive weeks, the longest winning streak on record, according to Most Current and Season-to-Date ratings data released on Monday by Nielsen*.
CBS had the top three daytime shows led by “The Price is Right” (3.95 million) in first place followed by “The Young and the Restless” (3.29 million) in second and “The Bold and the Beautiful” (2.79 million) in third, with all three ranking among the top daytime programs for the 13th consecutive season (since the 2012-2023 season) or 571 of 615 weeks.
Factoring in the Most Current and Season-to-Date ratings for “Let’s Make a Deal” (2.21 million) and “Beyond the Gates” (1.82 million), the network is averaging 2.76 million viewers overall.
“Beyond the Gates,” the newest series to join the daypart, is up +48% over former time slot occupant “The Talk.”
While a breakdown was not provided, CBS is seeing across-the-board gains for each of its daytime dramas among streaming viewership, each up year-over-year and seeing double-digit lifts over their broadcast-only averages.
In terms of the network’s “weekly consecutive streak,” it should be noted that while the network’s streak started on October 3, 1988 during a period when Ronald Reagan was president and floppy discs were still the standard mechanism for saving data, the overall streak did see an interruption during the week of July 22-29, 1996 due to NBC’s broadcast of the Atlanta Summer Olympic games. Since then, CBS has maintained its lead for 1,500 consecutive weeks, approximately 28 years and eight months.
In addition to leading as the most-watched daytime program season-to-date, “The Price is Right” has also ranked No. 1 for 691 of the last 701 weeks. Similarly, “The Young and the Restless” has ranked as the most-watched daytime drama series for more than 36 years or 1,878 consecutive weeks, a streak that excludes amended title weeks, those that deviated from the show’s official title, specifically repeats that aired under the “Young & Restless” moniker during the pandemic era.
Note*: All milestones include ties and data factoring in Live+Same Day and Live Pre-DVR before 12/26/2005, excluding breakouts, sustainers, specials, amended titles, and news programming except for “GMA3” variations. Milestones also do not include the week of 1/27/20, when most daytime shows were preempted for the Trump Impeachment Hearings, and the week of 10/29/12, when all programming was broken out due to Hurricane Sandy coverage.