Chicago Fire’s latest season was a hit with fans, but how did it do by the numbers? Here’s a look at the Chicago Fire season 7 ratings.
Now that Chicago Fire has finished another season, it’s time for our annual post-season ratings review, where we look at something else that’s important to the show—its ratings numbers.
One Chicago fans know that as much as we love the show, TV is also a business, and that comes down to ratings. We’ve been providing you with weekly ratings reports throughout the season, but now it’s time to look at the big picture and see what that tells us about season 7.
Overall numbers
The Chicago Fire season 7 premiere had 8.08 million viewers, which is not quite as great as it sounds—that’s only the third highest-rated premiere in the show’s history, and it’s almost a million eyeballs behind the second-highest (8.90).
However, it was significantly better-rated than the first episode of season 6. That brought in 7.19 million, so the show gained 890,000 premiere viewers, year over year.
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The finale did take a ratings hit, down to 7.51 million, but that was still good enough to make it the second highest-rated finale in show history. Only the season 4 finale (7.91) had bigger numbers.
And it was also a massive improvement over the season 6 finale, which had 5.95 million people watching in May 2018. Chicago Fire gained more than a million and a half more viewers (1.95) in that respect!
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Lowest-rated episode
The episode with the lowest live audience was “The Solution to Everything.” But that was also a relatively slow episode, plot-wise, as it largely centered on the story between Matthew Casey (Jesse Spencer) and reporter Naomi Graham (recurring guest star Kate Villanova), so it’s not a shock that it wouldn’t pull in a huge audience.
That episode premiered on November 14, the week before Thanksgiving, so perhaps there were some early holiday plans or people already traveling for the holiday? Whether it was the story or the schedule, a lot of people tuned out for this one.
Highest-rated episode
Not a huge surprise here, but the most watched Chicago Fire episode this season was one of the two crossover episodes. “What I Saw” kicked off the second One Chicago crossover, and brought in an audience of 8.85 million people watching live.
Crossover episodes always bring in numbers—after all, they’re always big events and they’re also heavily promoted by NBC in the weeks leading up to them—but this one even crushed the other crossover installment! The first one, “Going To War”, only had 8.10 million. Still a great audience, but it’s interesting to see the big disparity between the two.
For the latest Chicago Fire season 7 spoilers and news, plus more on the entire series, follow the Chicago Fire category at One Chicago Center.