‘Fire Country’ Post-AFC Championship Episode Delivers Best 7-Day Scripted Broadcast Audience In A Year For CBS

Fire Country rode the coattails of the AFC Championship to red hot ratings for its January 29 episode.

The episode, which moved from its usual Friday primetime spot on CBS to Sunday after the matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Cincinnati Bengals, tallied 12.22M total viewers in seven-day viewing, which is up about 20% from the 10M that tuned in same-day.

The episode’s delayed viewership marks the second best seven-day audience for a scripted series this season, coming in just behind the season premiere of Yellowstone (which posted 12.68M viewers). It’s also the best seven-day audience for a broadcast television scripted series since the NCIS: Hawai’i episode that aired after last year’s AFC Championship.

It’s fairly typical for shows on any network with an NFL lead-in, especially a playoff game, to get a boost in ratings. This year’s Kansas City Chiefs vs. Cincinnati Bengals matchup earned CBS the most-watched NFL conference championship game in four years with 53.1M people tuning in.

For reference, this season of Fire Country is currently averaging an audience of about 6M people per episode. The episode that aired this past Friday saw 6.4M people tune in.

According to CBS, the January 29 episode of Fire Country also earned the largest streaming audience of any CBS series to date across Paramount+ and CBS digital platforms. When tallied across all platforms (live, playback, VOD and streaming), the episode is the most-viewed CBS scripted original since NCIS on April 6, 2021.

Fire Country stars Max Thieriot as Bode Donovan, a young convict seeking redemption and a shortened prison sentence by joining a prison release firefighting program in Northern California, where he and other inmates are partnered with elite firefighters to extinguish massive, unpredictable wildfires across the region. It’s a high-risk, high-reward assignment, and the heat is turned up when Bode is assigned to the program in his rural hometown, where he was once a golden all-American son – until his troubles began. Five years ago, Bode burned down everything in his life, leaving town with a big secret. Now he’s back, with the rap sheet of a criminal and the audacity to believe in a chance for redemption with Cal Fire.

The drama, from Jerry Bruckheimer Television and CBS Studios, is inspired by Thieriot’s experiences growing up in fire country and stems from an original idea by the actor, who also co-penned the story for the pilot with its writers, Tony Phelan and Joan Rater.

Fire Country airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.