Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Justin Hartley is heading back to the Super Bowl. Hartley’s new CBS drama “Tracker” has landed the best lead-in imaginable for a series premiere: The show has landed the coveted post-Super Bowl slot next season, launching behind Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday, Feb.
11, 2024. Hartley, of course, knows a thing or two about that slot. As one of the stars of NBC’s “This Is Us,” he watched a Crock Pot tear his TV family apart in that show’s very special “Super Bowl Sunday” episode, airing right after the big game in 2018.
In premiering “Tracker” after the Super Bowl, CBS continues its return to the once-common practice of using the biggest night on TV to launch a new series.
The last time CBS ran the game, in 2021, the network premiered “The Equalizer” behind Super Bowl LV. (It worked: “The Equalizer” is still on the air.) The time before that, in 2019, CBS used Super Bowl LIII to premiere “The World’s Best.” (It didn’t work: “The World’s Best” only lasted a season.) Last year, Fox used the Super Bowl lead-out slot to run the season premiere of its reality cooking competition “Next Level Chef.” Other post-Super Bowl airings for CBS in recent years include episodes of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” (2016), “Elementary” (2013), “Undercover Boss” (2010) and “Criminal Minds” (2007).
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