TUESDAY
SHILO:
CRAIG:
ACTUAL SCHEDULE: 8:00 The Resident; 9:00 Empire
SHILO: I don’t know, guys. I’m not really here for this lineup. The Resident is forced against NCIS, The Voice, and The Conners, all three shows that I could see sharing audience with the Emily VanCamp medical drama. Of course, it already faces one form of The Voice on Mondays and it at least gets to keep the local lead-in, but the way Tuesday is scheduled as a whole makes this feel like leftovers night. What doesn’t help is the incompatibility between The Resident and 9:00 lead-out Empire, the latter of which got some major middle finger scheduling following the Jussie Smollett scandal. While part of the reason Empire moved was the network cancelling Star and Filthy Rich not being able to go in fall, throwing your #2 drama from this season up against This Is Us and ABC’s Mixed-ish/Black-ish with an incompatible feels more than a little personal. It should be an improvement over what Lethal Weapon was doing here, and it makes some sense to deprioritize something that’s headed into a final season, but what a way for what was once the strongest show on broadcast to go out.
CRAIG: Last Man Standing vs. The Conners would have been a very big deal, and I’m surprised FOX didn’t have the nerve to go for that. But really, what was the point in renewing Last Man Standing — one of the big success stories of the last TV season — only to bench it for midseason? It boggles my mind. Empire on Tuesday is also a choice I’m not sure about, but again, with such limited time I guess FOX doesn’t want to be predictable.
