Chicago PD season 6 ratings report: Review this season’s numbers

Chicago PD’s latest season was a hit with fans, but how did it do by the numbers? Here’s a look at the Chicago PD season 6 ratings.

Now that Chicago PD 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 6.

Overall numbers

In general, Chicago PD didn’t experience the same growth that the other two One Chicago series did with the creation of Chicago Wednesdays. The season 6 premiere had a live audience of 7.14 million, which was good enough for third in the show’s history.

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It was only about a million viewers more than the season 5 premiere in May 2018 (6.11 million), which is a solid gain but not as much as Chicago Fire and Chicago Med picked up this year.

If you’re looking for a silver lining, though, PD had its biggest premiere audience since season 2 (when it brought in 8.51 million in 2014).

As far as the finale goes, that reached 6.59 million people, which was very little growth compared to the previous seasons (6.34 million for season 5, and 6.50 for season 4). Out of the six Chicago PD finales, this one was only good enough for fourth place.

That’s something to keep an eye on as we move into next season—since this series isn’t expanding its audience in the same way that its sister programs are, does that mean it needs a shake-up or could be running out of steam?

But with new syndication deals struck last year, this is also the most financially viable One Chicago show, so it’s a big grey area not unlike the ones that Intelligence deals with.

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Lowest-rated episode

The Chicago PD episode that missed the mark with viewers was unfortunately one of its best this season. “Black and Blue” pulled in only 6 million live audience members, as the episode sent Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins) undercover and painted him into an ethical corner.

There’s an interesting caveat, though; that episode aired on Nov. 14, which was the same week that the lowest-rated episode of Chicago Fire aired. So it’s clear that was just a bad week for the One Chicago franchise as a whole, especially since it was a week before Thanksgiving.

Still, it’s disappointing, since that was such a great episode!

Highest-rated episode

Something else Chicago PD has in common with Chicago Fire is that its highest-rated installment this season comes from the second One Chicago crossover. “Good Men” had 8.91 million people tuned in live, to see the conclusion to the two-show event.

What’s even more notable is that this was the only episode of season 6 to reach that 8 million mark. That’s how much higher rated this episode was than the rest of the season! The runner-up was another crossover episode, “Endings”, which had 7.78 million.

“Good Men” clearly beat that episode, and as with the other shows, it’s interesting that the top rated episodes are the crossovers. Obviously, those are going to be popular because they are so heavily advertised and tend to be much bigger episodes overall.

But at the same time, ideally you’d want to see that same audience for stand-alone weeks, too, and not have the shows having to rely on one another to deliver their best numbers. We’ll see if season 7 can make a bigger splash.

For the latest Chicago PD season 6 spoilers and news, plus more on the entire series, follow the Chicago PD category at One Chicago Center.