Law and Order SVU ratings report: Week of November 29

How did this week’s Law and Order SVU season 20 episode do in the TV ratings? Here’s the Nov. 29 edition of the SVU Ratings Report.

With the 20th season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season continuing, it’s time for another look at the Dick Wolf series’ TV ratings with the SVU Ratings Report.

This Thursday was the show’s midseason finale, where many TV shows often look for big ratings with cliffhangers or other major plot twists. For Olivia Benson and company, though, the season broke on a down note.

Thursday’s episode “Alta Kockers” had 3.8 million viewers watching live. That was down from the 3.99 who watched the last new episode, “Mea Culpa,” two weeks earlier.

The series lost 190,000 live viewers and kept itself under the 4 million viewer mark for the second week in a row. But that’s not the entire picture.

Even though SVU‘s ratings went down this week, it actually went up one spot in the TV rankings! It was 9th among 17 broadcast TV programs, and also 9th amongst adults 18-49. The latter is even more of a surprise since its 0.7 share is down from the 0.8 for “Mea Culpa.”

How did that happen? That means that even though the show was attracting a smaller audience, other shows were also seeing their audience dwindle. With an important Thursday Night Football game between New Orleans and Dallas airing on FOX, a lot of eyeballs were once again on sports.

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TV specials populated the night, including on NBC, which aired two hours of LEGO Jurassic World. Those two hours came in 13th and 16th respectively. And the show’s lead-in I Feel Bad continued to struggle, being ranked 14th.

So out of 17 shows that were on the five broadcast networks Thursday, NBC’s lineup was 13th, 16th, 12th (for a new Will & Grace), 14th and 10th. It’s hard to ask the Dick Wolf show to have a huge ratings lift when the rest of the night is even lower-ranked (and none of it is even sort of in the same ballpark as a crime drama).

It also didn’t help that the episode didn’t have a major “hook” outside of its big-name guest stars. If it had been more of a typical midseason finale, there might’ve been extra buzz to pull in some casual viewers. Instead, SVU stayed the course—which is totally fine dramatically, but it’ll have to look for a ratings rise when it returns.

For the latest SVU season 20 spoilers and news, plus more on all of Dick Wolf’s other series, follow the Dick Wolf category at One Chicago Center.