When ABC renewed Scrubs and Shifting Gears for the 2026-27 TV season this week, it left one freshman drama as the only scripted series still on the bubble.
RJ Decker is now that show.
The Scott Speedman-led procedural just wrapped its first season on a cliffhanger that actually earned the reaction it got.
That doesn’t happen by accident. People didn’t dip in and out of RJ Decker Season 1. They stuck with it week to week.
The season was only nine episodes, but it didn’t feel incomplete. If anything, the shorter run helped.
The main mystery had space to breathe, and the case-of-the-week stories didn’t feel like filler to stretch things out.
It felt like one of those older cable dramas that builds an audience slowly instead of trying to grab everyone at once. You could even argue ABC would have had an easier time launching it in the summer.
That’s not me knocking it. The numbers just need context.
RJ Decker Season 1 averaged a little over 3 million viewers with a demo just under 0.2 in live+same-day. On paper, that’s not lighting up any charts.
RJ Decker is a Respectable Performer for ABC
But context matters here more than ever.
Grey’s Anatomy was renewed with a similar demo and fewer total viewers. That alone makes it hard to treat RJ Decker like it’s clearly underperforming.
Then you look at delayed viewing.
The premiere went from 3.7 million viewers to 11.6 million in under a week. That’s not a small lift. That’s a show people are finding after it airs.
And it stayed steady. Week after week in the 10/9c slot, which is not an easy place to hold an audience. If anything, that consistency says more than the raw numbers do.
So why hasn’t ABC made a call yet?
Because this is where things get complicated. Live ratings don’t really decide renewals anymore. They’re part of it, but not the whole picture.
You have streaming. You have delayed viewing. You have international value. You have cost. All of it gets weighed together.
We’ve already seen how that plays out.
CBS canceling DMV despite solid live numbers wasn’t really about the live numbers.
It was about what the show would look like once everything else was added. That’s where broadcast TV is right now.
And it’s why shows like NCIS: Hawai’i can still end up on the chopping block even with millions of viewers. The math has changed.
RJ Decker is also sitting in the middle of ABC, figuring out what comes next.
There’s talk around The Rookie: North, and if that moves forward, it’s going to need space somewhere on the schedule.
The Rookie has already been shifted around plenty over the years, and ABC clearly sees value in that world. But The Rookie: Feds has already shown that not every franchise extension works.
This is where it gets frustrating.
ABC Needs to do the Right Thing
Because RJ Decker has done the thing networks always say they want. It holds steady. It builds after airing. It actually grows outside its timeslot rather than collapsing into it.
That used to be enough to secure a renewal without much debate.
Now it isn’t always.
And if ABC does end up walking away from RJ Decker, it won’t be because it didn’t find an audience. It’ll be because it didn’t line up neatly with everything else happening around it.
That’s the reality of broadcast right now.
From the outside, RJ Decker looks like a show that did its job. It found viewers, it grew beyond live airing, and it gave ABC something stable in a tough slot.
The question is whether that still counts for as much as it used to.
And if it doesn’t, then the bigger issue isn’t RJ Decker at all. It’s what kind of shows broadcast TV is actually willing to keep around.
What are your thoughts on the situation, RJ Decker Fanatics? Do you think the series has made a case for renewal? Would you be mad if it didn’t make the cut over The Rookie: North?
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