As A Former Fan Of CSI: Vegas Prior To Cancellation After 3 Seasons, Here's Why I Gave Up On The CBS Drama

Despite a slew of renewals including the FBIs and the original NCIS, CBS has announced some bad news with two cancellations: CSI: Vegas after three seasons and So Help Me Todd after two seasons. Both primetime dramas were doing fairly well in the 2024 TV schedule, but evidently not well enough to warrant a return in the 2024-2025 TV season. It's unfortunate news, but I'm not as devastated as I would have been a year or two ago. While I was a big fan of CSI: Vegas at the start, CBS lost me for the third season.

CSI: Vegas Cancelled After Three Seasons

First things first! THR reports that CSI: Vegas is likely to be one of the most-watched series cancelled this spring, with an average per episode audience of 6.4 million over seven days of viewing. While those numbers would certainly not warrant cancellation on networks that don't regularly reach those heights, they didn't guarantee a future beyond the current third season. (So Help Me Todd averages 6.3 million per episode.)

These two shows join comedies Young Sheldon and Bob Hearts Abishola in airing their final episodes in May, although both of those CBS shows had already been slated to end in early 2024, and the former has a spinoff on the way. The cancellation of CSI: Vegas after three seasons doesn't make it the shortest-lived show in the larger CSI franchise, but it only beat CSI: Cyber by one season.

Why CSI: Vegas Already Lost Me Before Season 3

Now, I'm certainly not celebrating CSI: Vegas getting the axe from CBS, and the cancellation might even motivate me to rewatch some of the earlier days of the show streaming with a Paramount+ subscription. But I would have been more likely to wail and gnash my teeth if it had been cancelled last year, due to one simple but important change: the show's move to Sundays threw me off.

Tracker is proof enough that Sunday nights aren't death slots for TV shows, as Justin Hartley's new show was such a big hit so quickly that CBS wasted no time in renewing it. But CSI: Vegas spent two seasons on weeknights, with the first on Wednesday nights and the second on Thursday nights. Admittedly, both of those were competitive nights, with One Chicago on NBC's Wednesdays as well as NBC's Law & Order block and ABC's Station 19/Grey's Anatomy pairing on Thursdays, so it might have been hard for CSI: Vegas to pull an audience from those other networks.

But I never forgot about CSI: Vegas on weeknights, which wasn't the case for the show with the move to Sundays. The series established itself in the middle of the week across two seasons and more than 30 episodes; for me, it just didn't work as a Sunday night transplant, especially now that it's part of the same primetime block as The Equalizer, which has been a solid Sunday show since its launch in 2021. All in all, I just wasn't attached enough to follow the latest CSI series to the weekend every week following the WGA writers strike.

Admittedly, part of that might be due to the fact that I feel Season 1 was by far the strongest of the three seasons of CSI: Vegas. The series was originally billed as a limited series sequel to the original CSI, with Jorja Fox and William Petersen reprising their roles. They didn't return after the renewal for Season 2. Is my fall from the bandwagon for a reason as simple as scheduling fair of me? Maybe not, and maybe I'm the only one who didn't love the move, but either way, the end is nigh.

For fans who hadn't already fallen off the CSI: Vegas train, the show at least hasn't run out of episodes yet. The Season 3 finale that is now also the series finale will air on Sunday, May 19 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS, following the Tracker Season 1 finale at 9 p.m. and the Equalizer Season 4 finale at 8 p.m. You can also revisit earlier episodes streaming via Paramount+.