Skip to footer

Michael Weatherly departs ultra-successful CBS show 'NCIS'

Weatherly's final episode of the CBS drama aired Tuesday evening. 'NCIS' has become one of TV's most successful ratings performers.

|
Katy Winn/Invision/AP
Michael Weatherly arrives at the CBS Television Studios Summer Soiree at The London Hotel in Los Angeles in 2014.

"NCIS" actor Michael Weatherly departed the long-running, high-rated CBS show after a final appearance on Tuesday, leaving the program he has starred in since its debut in 2003.  

(Spoilers for the newest episode of "NCIS" follow…) 

In the newest installment of the CBS program, Weatherly's character Special Agent Tony DiNozzo, one of a group of people working for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, was told that love interest Ziva (played by Coté de Pablo) had died. Tony then meets his and Ziva's daughter for the first time. 

Tony later tells his boss, Leroy Gibbs (Mark Harmon), "I'm everything to that little girl now… I'm done now."

Weatherly's final episode was also the season finale for the thirteenth season of the CBS drama. 

"NCIS" has become one of broadcast TV's highest-rated shows, with the program ranking at number three on the list of broadcast TV's highest-rated shows for total viewers for the 2014-2015 TV season. (Spin-off "NCIS: New Orleans" was close behind it at number four.) 

The program is much more popular with older viewers, however. When TV programs are ranked according to viewers 18-49, a demographic which advertisers often look at, the show doesn't come in on the list until number 25. 

"One perpetually overlooked show topped [programs such as 'The Voice,' 'Scandal,' and 'American Idol'] last week with an audience of more than 17 million," Jason Lynch of The Atlantic noted that at the beginning of 2014: "NCIS."

Yet showrunner and executive producer Gary Glasberg feels that these other programs attract more media coverage than "NCIS." "As much as I would love for our cast and crew to get some attention, at the end of the day it just doesn't seem to be in the cards," Mr. Glasberg told The Atlantic. 

Meanwhile, Neil Genzlinger of the New York Times noted that the ratings for "NCIS" are "a number that many of the most-talked-about shows can only fantasize about, an anomaly in a landscape that is increasingly fractured and full of shows aimed at one relatively narrow demographic or another… Consistency and engaging characters have kept it there."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Michael Weatherly departs ultra-successful CBS show 'NCIS'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/TV/2016/0518/Michael-Weatherly-departs-ultra-successful-CBS-show-NCIS
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe