How Criminal Minds: Evolution Can Evolve Paramount+’s Audience
Photo: Warner Bros./Discovery
The long-running police procedural Criminal Minds only recently ended its 15-season run back in 2020, but a sequel called Criminal Minds: Evolution was released in November on Paramount+. As Paramount Network’s streamer consolidates its biggest titles, gradually taking back properties like South Park and Yellowstone from other streamers, this new series should continue to draw cord-cutters who in the past had turned to Hulu, Netflix, HBO, and the like.
But the challenge is considerable for a newer streamer like Paramount+. More established services like Netflix merely needs to keep subscribers, but Paramount+ has to take subscribers away from others. Subscription packages are becoming more expensive, forcing the average viewer to make tough decisions about which streamers are worth their money. So how can Paramount make the most of its ad dollars and target TV fans most likely to leave other streamers for a chance to watch Criminal Minds: Evolution?
We’re looking at the shows across the streaming universe that fans of the original Criminal Minds series are most likely to love. This research reveals some vulnerabilities in the subscriber bases of Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and Peacock, all of which have shows with fan bases that are statistically more likely to love Criminal Minds.
We organized Criminal Minds fans into four basic categories: fans of shows on Netflix, on Hulu, on HBO Max, and on Peacock. Some of these shows are exclusively available on one streamer, while others can be viewed on multiple platforms. For instance, the thriller series The Blacklist is an NBC show that is available to stream on both Peacock and Netflix, while Stranger Things is a Netflix original available to stream only on its producer’s platform. We also included a few shows on Paramount+/Showtime more likely to appeal to Criminal Minds fans, visible in the very center of the graphs. Here are a few takeaways that jumped out:
The Closer to Crime, the Better: One theme that appears most in this list of affinities is shows centered on crime and murder. Those shows can be period pieces like Mindhunter, murder mysteries like Big Little Lies and Unsolved Mysteries, police procedurals like Law & Order and Chicago PD, or even superhero shows like Gotham, but they're all centered on criminals or the cops dedicated to catching them. Even their favorite comedies, which include Brooklyn Nine-Nine, are crime adjacent.
Fans Have Developed a Taste for Netflix: Though Criminal Minds is no longer available to stream there, it's clear that many fans of the show are Netflix subscribers, as we found more affinities for its originals than for any other streamer. Criminal Minds fans love more shows on Netflix than could be fit on this graphic, including Ozark, Bloodline, and Making a Murderer.
Criminal Minds Viewers Still Binge Broadcast TV: We're living in a different era of TV than the one Criminal Minds debuted in back in 2005, but fans of the show still love plenty of TV to have premiered on traditional, broadcast television in the years afterwards. That includes not just Dick Wolf shows like Chicago Med and Law & Order: SVU, but more recent series, including NBC's Manifest and The Blacklist, ABC's The Good Doctor, as well as Fox's Gotham.
With Netflix reporting subscriber losses and HBO Max forced to tighten its belt, the television world is trending toward crowd-pleasing entertainment — shows with mass appeal that are considered “safe” from a financial standpoint. The success of straightforward action shows like Reacher on Amazon, as well as dating/reality shows like Love Is Blind on Netflix, suggest there’s an appetite among viewers for this kind of content.
Though it’s late to the Streaming Wars game in many ways, Paramount+ does have an advantage here. The streamer’s library of content from CBS brings the kind of broadly popular programming common on broadcast TV to cord-cutters. Criminal Minds: Evolution represents an opportunity to draw fans of more traditional television to a new show on a new streamer. But to make the most of this advantage, Paramount will have to be brutal in its approach to the audiences of other streamers. More than just bring in cable subscribers, the young service will have to make an offer to customers of Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and Peacock that they can’t refuse.
