Why 'Blue Bloods' Season 14 Renewal Sent Some TV Fans Spinning

By John Connor Coulston - April 1, 2023 12:28 pm EDT

CBS renewed Blue Bloods for Season 14 this past week, and fans of the procedural cop show rejoiced. However, another section of the internet had quite a different reaction. A chunk of the internet was shocked that Blue Bloods even existed, much less has been on television for 13-going-on-14 seasons.

You see, Blue Bloods is widely popular, but it isn't exactly a big part of the cultural zeitgeist. While many broadcast procedurals (FBI, the One Chicago shows, NCIS) are the most successful shows on TV, younger viewers who are more active in online conversation don't tend to gravitate towards them. Furthermore, they aren't exactly critical darlings, so many members of the media don't pay them much attention. So, while Blue Bloods stirs up a bit of conversation in Facebook groups, Twitter typically ignores it.

When news broke of the Tom Selleck and Donnie Wahlberg series getting renewed again, it took many by surprise. It stirred up a fun conversation about "dad TV" — the kinds of shows that are massively successful with older audiences. Scroll on for some of the takes from the conversation.

Slide 1

It’s easy to forget there’s like a whole other world out there https://t.co/TKAzP0hBmH
— Mr. Chau (@Srirachachau) March 29, 2023

"You know who never forgets? My dad," one person wrote. A second person added, "My mom watches this show because she has a crush on Tom Selleck, but doesn't seem to actually like the show."

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Slide 2

the crazy part is that the other world is like ten times bigger than this one. Like ten million people watch it every week.
— Fergeaux (@fergeaux) March 29, 2023

"It's a fun show to watch with the parents," a third person tweeted. "Fits their sensibilities really well."

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Slide 3

It's one of the reasons I hate when people judge something's "cultural impact" by fanfic and fanart alone. There's tens of millions of people who mostly watch network procedurals and don't feel the need to post, more than anyone has seen any one thing on HBO or whatever
— David Lebo (@leboism) March 29, 2023

"I have never in my life heard of this program," a fourth Twitter user wrote, with a fifth saying, "Our parents are watching hundreds of hours of TV shows we've never seen and often never heard of."

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Slide 4

Never bet against Dad TV, man.

Yellowstone, NCIS, anything enough dads can latch onto and think is neat will never die.
— Will Hayward (@WillHayward) March 29, 2023

"whenever i go home from school one of my parents will start talking about some hour long tv show they watch on cbs or nbc or whatever and it's always something i have never heard of and is apparently in its like 5th season," another person wrote.

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Slide 5

It is very close of having twice as many season than Magnum, but nobody will ever look at Tom Selleck as the Blue Bloods guy.
— ダニー 🗼 (@shentenza) March 29, 2023

"Crazy to think about how many people are employed by making the s— that your parents watch," yet another user noted. An additional Twitter user wrote, "There is basically not a point in my parents house my mom isn't watching Blue Bloods or Law and Order."

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Slide 6

I never realized how much CBS has a stranglehold on the 60+ crowd until I went over to my ex's parents house with her every weekend and they always had CBS on. I've seen so many random episodes of Madam Secretary because of that lol
— Jane Altoids (@staticbluebat) March 29, 2023

"As a kid I used to know *everything* that was on TV and I'm just now finding out CBS has a show simply called FBI that's been on like five years and already has two spinoffs," another person wrote. Yet another person tweeted, "Some people don't have a mom that watches almost exclusively network TV legal dramas and it shows."

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