Wednesday, May 20, 2026

TV: Donnie Wahlberg’s “Boston Blue” Opens 600K Viewers Short of “Blue Bloods” with Watered Down Version of Original Series

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Last Friday’s “Boston Blue” was missing a couple of things.

Mostly. the Reagan family from “Blue Bloods.”

Donnie Wahlberg stars in a “Blue” spin off that’s a shadow of the original 14 year run series.

The result? Last Friday, numbers were 4.6 million, down from the 5.3 million average of ‘Blue Bloods” final season. And that was with heavy promotion.

That’s a loss of 600,000 viewers.

Tonight is the second episode. Will more old “Blue Bloods” fans tune in? Or do they small a rat, a runaround to get rid of Tom Selleck and the original cast in order to cut costs and move on?

Sequels or spin offs of hit TV shows rarely work. “Frasier” was the notable exception. Back in the day there was “Lou Grant” and “Rhoda.” But shows like “Joey,” born out of “Friends,” died quickly. We’ll see how Blue Boston gets pretty soon.

Hey– maybe “Boston Blue” will revisit Mark Wahlberg’s long ago arrests, conviction, and jail time from the 1980s for racially motivated attacks in Boston. Mel Gibson could play his lawyer. Now, that’s a storyline!

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009 and previously edited Fame magazine and wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. is articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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