Why Was NCIS: New Orleans Cancelled?

Running for seven seasons, NCIS: New Orleans is the third series in the perennially popular NCIS crime procedural television franchise. The series also has the dubious distinction of being the first NCIS series to end, wrapping its final season in 2021. Here is why NCIS: New Orleans was cancelled.

Why Was NCIS: New Orleans Cancelled?

While NCIS: New Orleans retained a strong regular viewership right through its initial broadcast run on CBS, the series couldn’t match the ratings or, more tellingly, the syndication packages of its sister series, NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles. These syndication packages are how the network sells its series to other platforms and foreign markets, and New Orleans did not garner as profitable deals as other NCIS shows. With this in mind, CBS announced NCIS: New Orleans would end with its seventh season approximately two months before the seventh season finale.

Looking more closely at the final months of NCIS: New Orleans, there appears to be more to the cancellation decision than just external deals. A report by Newsweek revealed that the seventh season saw a nearly 25% ratings drop compared to its viewership from Season 6. Meanwhile, New Orleans was also regularly receiving less than 50% of the viewership of the main NCIS series. With a fourth NCIS spinoff, NCIS: Hawai’i, in active development at the time, CBS made room in its programming by axing the least watched NCIS series in its broadcast lineup.

Premiering in 2014, NCIS: New Orleans was introduced, prior to its full debut, in NCIS Season 11 as a branch Naval Criminal Investigative Service covering much of the Gulf of Mexico Delta. The series starred and was executive produced by Scott Bakula, who appeared in all seven seasons as Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Cassius Pride. Pride led a rotating task force, occasionally working alongside the FBI, to ensure the safety of those in or around the U.S. Navy around the major port cities in the south.