Is a Blue Bloods season 14 renewal going to come down to the wire at CBS? We do remain somewhat skeptical about that, but there is evidence at this point that makes the subject worthy of a deeper dive.

After all, all you really need to do right now is look a little bit further at the ratings information for this past episode of the show. Friday’s episode generated just a 0.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic and a little over 5.4 million viewers. When it comes to live+same-day numbers, this is one of the weaker totals that we have seen for the show so far. That could be viewed as a troublesome sign and we’d understand if anyone is worried … but we’re not going to be someone to press the panic button as of yet.

After all, let’s start this article off by noting this: The vast majority of networks out there would be doing jumping jacks at the notion of any of their shows getting the sort of ratings that Blue Bloods did for this past episode, and we don’t think that this is any cause at all to press the panic button. There are still DVR ratings to consider, plus streams of this and other episode after the fact.

We have said this for a while, but the chief concern when it comes to a Blue Bloods season 14 is not so much the live ratings as it is the cost of the show itself. It has an enormous cast of regulars and recurring players compared to the average network TV drama these days. Also, let’s remember that filming in New York City comes with a number of challenges, both in terms of cost and logistics. We do think that CBS wants there to be another season, but there may be sacrifices and cuts required to make that happen.

Of course, this whole situation would be a little bit less anxiety-inducing if we knew what some of these cuts were, but we’re not so lucky when it comes to that.