LOS ANGELES — CBS is apparently looking at Tuesday night and asking one simple question: how much NCIS can one person reasonably consume? Tonight, the network answers with three straight hours inside the NCIS universe — Season 24 of the flagship at 8 p.m. ET, the series premiere of NCIS: New York at 9, and Season 3 of NCIS: Origins at 10. It is the boldest franchise bet on broadcast television this fall, and the rest of the dial is doing everything it can to make you change the channel.
8 p.m. ET: NCIS opens Season 24 on CBS
The night starts with the mothership. NCIS opens Season 24 at 8 p.m. ET with an episode titled "Wayward Son," and the premiere is doing double duty: it has to launch a new season of television's most durable procedural while warming up the audience for the biggest franchise expansion of the night. Plenty of shows don't survive 24 episodes. NCIS has survived long enough to launch multiple generations of spinoffs while remaining the franchise's Tuesday-night anchor — and CBS is using that veteran gravity to pull viewers straight into the 9 p.m. hour.
The placement is the strategy. NCIS isn't just premiering; it's functioning as the launchpad. CBS has positioned the new series directly between the flagship and Origins, which is about as much of a franchise welcome party as a show can get.
9 p.m. ET: NCIS: New York makes its debut
The centerpiece of the night is the series premiere of NCIS: New York at 9 p.m. ET, and it arrives with the franchise's heaviest hitters attached. LL Cool J reprises his role as Sam Hanna, the character he played for more than a decade on NCIS: Los Angeles, starring opposite Scott Caan. Moving Sam from Los Angeles to New York gives the character an entirely different team and environment — and gives the new show an instant, built-in audience of viewers who spent years with him.
The real question tonight is whether NCIS: New York can establish enough of its own identity to justify becoming the latest branch on a television family tree that is already large enough to require its own organizational chart. Sam is hardly unfamiliar territory for longtime viewers — but a new city, a new team, and a new co-lead in Caan mean the show can't coast on nostalgia alone. CBS clearly believes in it: premiering between the flagship and Origins is the network's way of telling viewers this one is a pillar, not an experiment.
This is also part of a broader pattern. CBS just paired Tracker Season 4 with Marshals Season 2 for a Sunday one-two punch — the network's scripted strategy this season is built around stacking proven franchises into appointment-television blocks, Sunday nights for the action block, Tuesday nights for the NCIS universe. It's a deliberate answer to the streaming era: make broadcast feel like an event again, three hours at a time.
10 p.m. ET: NCIS: Origins brings Mark Harmon back into the story
The night closes with the Season 3 premiere of NCIS: Origins at 10 p.m. ET with the episode titled "Don't You Forget About Me" — and it's playing with both ends of the Gibbs timeline. In 1992, the team races to rescue a kidnapped Randy while young Gibbs and Lala deal with what happened between them. Meanwhile, the present-day storyline catches up with Mark Harmon's older Gibbs in Alaska, where people from his past disrupt the quiet retirement he has built.
That present-day component gives Origins an intriguing new layer for Season 3. The show has always been about understanding how Austin Stowell's younger Gibbs eventually becomes the man viewers met on NCIS — but putting Harmon physically back into the story gives the past and present a much more direct connection. For longtime fans, it's the most emotionally loaded hour of the night: the franchise's most iconic character, older, quieter, and not as far from the action as he thought.
The competition: it's Mariah Carey Night on Dancing with the Stars
The most wonderfully bizarre counterprogramming of the night comes from ABC and Disney+, where Dancing with the Stars Season 35 celebrates "Mariah Carey Night" beginning at 8 p.m. ET. One side has federal investigations; the other has Mimi. Choose your fighter.
The 12 remaining celebrity-and-pro couples perform routines set entirely to Carey's catalog for Week 4, with a fifth elimination at the end of the night. According to the published song list from lohud/USA Today, the highlights: Tatyana Ali and Jan Ravnik waltz to "Fantasy," Julia Stiles and Ezra Sosa take on a Viennese waltz to "Vision of Love," Amber Glenn and Pasha Pashkov rumba to "Hero," and Guillermo Rodriguez and Witney Carson close it out with a samba to "Obsessed." See our full Mariah Carey night guide for every song and dance style. Taylor Hanson and Britt Stewart went home last week on Yacht Rock Night, leaving a field that now loses one more couple tonight. Episodes air live on ABC and Disney+ at 8 p.m. ET and stream the next day on Hulu.
Streaming has its own plans
Hulu brings Reasonable Doubt back today with its Season 4 premiere dropping three episodes at once — Jax and the newly established Stewart Firm are trying to recover after the events that rocked her family and business, only for a high-profile crisis involving one of the firm's clients to pile on more pressure. Previously has the full Reasonable Doubt Season 4 breakdown. Dropping three episodes immediately means viewers don't have to wait three weeks for the new season to get moving.
Netflix adds All American Season 8 today following the season's run on The CW, plus the Season 3 premiere of Love Village and comedian Mojo Brookzz's debut Netflix special, I Know You Lying. FOX keeps its scripted lineup rolling with new episodes of Best Medicine at 8 p.m. ("Crate Expectations") and Doc at 9 p.m. ("I Know What I Want"), where Amy and Jake are forced to work together on a difficult case while their unresolved feelings remain unresolved, and Gina finds herself reconsidering some choices when Walter returns to Westside.
The bottom line
Tuesday is unusually deep even before the broadcast networks get started. But the night ultimately belongs to the NCIS universe — one veteran returning, one spinoff beginning, and another opening a season that brings Mark Harmon directly back into the action. NCIS: New York gets top billing in this guide because a franchise launch is still the biggest question mark of the night, and we're curious to see whether Sam Hanna can make New York his new home.
Reporting this story is based on
- What to Watch Tuesday, October 6: 'NCIS: New York,' 'NCIS' & 'Reasonable Doubt' Lead a Huge Night
The TV Cave — 2026-10-06 - Is 'Dancing with the Stars' on tonight? Mariah Carey Night songs, how to watch
lohud / USA Today — 2026-10-06
