The upcoming 14th season of CBS‘ venerable cop family drama Blue Bloods will be its last. The popular series starring Tom Selleck is getting an extended farewell with a two-part final season which will consist of 18 episodes, Deadline has learned. The first 10 will air this coming midseason, premiering on CBS Feb. 16 and streaming live on Paramount+; the remaining 8 will run in fall 2024.
Coming off a double Hollywood strike that reduced the sizes of the 2023-24 scripted seasons to 10-13 episodes each — with a number of CBS shows only doing 10 — the network is giving two of its top series that are coming to an end, Blue Bloods and Young Sheldon, a proper sendoff with expanded final seasons. As Deadline reported last week, the Big Bang Theory prequel’s seventh and final season will be comprised of 14 episodes.
Blue Bloods, about multiple generations of the Reagan family workin in New York law enforcement, is leaving while still on top. A long-time anchor to CBS’ formidable Friday night lineup, it was the most watched primetime program of the night last season and the #3 most watched broadcast drama with 9.54 million viewers (more than 11 million viewers an episode after +35-day multiplatform viewing.) Blue Bloods, produced by CBS Studios, has won its Friday 10 PM time slot in total viewers every season since the series’ 2010 launch.
“Blue Bloods will forever be a beloved part of CBS’s legacy. It ruled Friday nights with unprecedented dominance since its premiere and established itself as a pillar of our winning lineup with an exceptionally devoted fan base,” Amy Reisenbach, President, CBS Entertainment and David Stapf, President, CBS Studios, said in a joint statement.
The two executives acknowledged the series’ star and executive producer Selleck, the late Blue Bloods executive producer Leonard Goldberg, who died in 2019, and writer/executive producer Kevin Wade, who has been on the show since midway through the first season and showrunner since Season 2. They also referenced a Blue Bloods fixture, the Reagan’s weekly Sunday dinner, which is at the heart of each episode.
“We’ll be forever grateful to the legendary Leonard Goldberg for developing this signature series and to the amazing cast led by Tom Selleck, who America embraced as family and watched as welcomed guests at the Reagan dinner table,” Reisenbach and Stapf said. “We also sincerely thank the incredible writing and producing teams guided by executive producer Kevin Wade, for years of compelling episodes as they conceive this final chapter that we expect to be the most satisfying season yet for our loyal viewers.”
