One Chicago crossover leads to huge ratings for franchise

The One Chicago crossover earned big ratings for Chicago Fire, Chicago Med and Chicago PD. Check out Oct. 16’s numbers in the One Chicago ratings report.

One Chicago fans probably won’t be shocked to hear that the season’s first One Chicago crossover led to a ratings windfall for the NBC franchise.

The three-hour “Infection” event made NBC the most watched broadcast network on Wednesday and it wasn’t even close. The Peacock recorded an average of 8.51 million people tuned in live, and second-place CBS had only 4.98.

That means NBC beat its closest competition by a margin of over 3 million viewers—and now you know why the network is so keen on doing crossovers multiple times each season!

But what you might not know are the fun facts that emerge when you break that number down by individual show.

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Moving out of its normal time slot and up an hour to 8 p.m., Chicago Fire recorded 8.07 million people in live. That’s up from last week’s 7.63 (+0.44 million, or 440,000).

But even though the numbers went up, Fire went down from being Wednesday’s most-seen broadcast TV show to third place!

The story is the same when you look at the key demographic. Among adults 18-49, Fire jumped from a 1.2 to a 1.3. Yet it fell from second place to fifth place.

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So what’s with the going backwards even though the numbers are getting higher? Well, that’s because of extra competition from its own franchise—thanks to the crossover! As much as the big crossover events are good for One Chicago as a whole, they also create a ripple effect between the shows on an individual level.

Chicago Med was bumped back an hour to 9 p.m. to accommodate Chicago Fire, and it came home with 8.83 million live viewers. That was up from the previous 7.35 (+1.48, or 1,480,000 additional people).

That meant the time slot change actually hurt Fire and benefited Med in the overall rankings, because not only did Chicago Med have the most-watched part of the crossover, but it stole Fire’s title as the most-watched broadcast TV show this Wednesday!

In the demographic rankings, the medical drama recorded a 1.4, up big from last Wednesday’s 1.1, and tied for second place overall with….well, we’re sure you can guess at this point.

That would be Chicago PD, which climbed to its highest ratings of the season so far! The final hour of “Infection” delivered 8.63 million eyeballs, compared to the 6.41 for last Wednesday, and a big increase from the 5.99 the week before that. That’a huge week-to-week boost (+2.22, or roughly 2,220,000 extra viewers).

It lifted PD from fifth place to second overall, and marked the first week this season that it hasn’t been the lowest-rated One Chicago series.

The show also jumped from fifth amongst adults 18-49 to second in that category, by getting a 1.4 share amongst that section of viewers. That created a three-way tie on the night amongst a new Survivor on CBS, Chicago Med and Chicago PD.

Last but certainly not least, all of these numbers made something bigger than last season’s One Chicago crossover (which was the first under the “Chicago Wednesdays” schedule). Last season, only Chicago Med reached 8 million viewers during the crossover; this fall, all three shows passed that mark. How cool is that?!

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