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).
Originally titled “The Never Game,” “Tracker” was ordered to series back in December. The show has had a long road to air, having first been put into development at CBS in 2021 and ordered to pilot in July 2022. In the show, Hartley as “lone-wolf survivalist Colter Shaw,” who roams the country as a “reward seeker,” using his expert tracking skills to help private citizens and law enforcement solve all manner of mysteries while contending with his own fractured family.
“Tracker” is based on the Jeffery Deaver novel “The Never Game,” and also stars Fiona Rene as Reenie, Robin Weigert as Teddi, Abby McEnany as Velma and Eric Graise as Bobby.
Hartley, Ken Olin, Ben Winters, Hilary Weisman Graham and Jeffrey Deaver are executive producers. Olin directed the pilot from a script written by Winters. The series is produced by Twentieth Television.
“Tracker” airs after the CBS Sports presentation of Super Bowl LVII, airing Sunday, Feb. 11, 2024 from Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nev. The big game will be telecast live on both CBS and Paramount+.
The “Tracker” Super Bowl timeslot was announced Wednesday as part of CBS’ fall 2023 reveal; the network opted to announce its schedule a week before the upfronts presentation — as for the first time in decades, the Eye network isn’t showcasing its wares in Carnegie Hall to advertisers during the traditional upfront week. CBS had originally planned to celebrate its fall schedule via an event on Wednesday at Neuehouse Hollywood, but that party was put on hold due to the writers strike.