WEDNESDAY
CRAIG:
SHILO:
ACTUAL SCHEDULE: 8:00 The Masked Singer; 9:00 Not Just Me
CRAIG: I didn’t hate the Not Just Me trailer, though I also didn’t think of some of the creepy implications of its premise. I do hate the title, however. I understand not putting a FOX This Is Us clone opposite This Is Us, but this is definitely not what I expected from FOX Wednesday night. Maybe they’re banking on that surprise. It’s hard to sell original IP and concepts and maybe this is one that will resonate, in which case, good for them.
As for The Masked Singer — I’m not completely against this. Cycle #2 should still have some buzz, and that can propel FOX to have a successful Wednesday-Thursday-Friday punch of music, sports, and wrestling.
SHILO: I feel like The Masked Singer is about to be ran into the ground. I understand the inclination to do two cycles in a season given how powerful its ratings were this season, and the fact that it was never going to be a Survivor/America’s Next Top Model/Dancing with the Stars due to the gimmicky premise, but it feels like FOX is going to shorten the show’s life span this year. Overexposure for something without a durable premise is a very real thing and when combined with reports of budget cuts, I think it’ll walk out of the 2019-20 season a much weaker show than it walked in. Even discounting how frontloaded both the fall (hype) and winter/spring seasons (Super Bowl) will be.
As far as 9:00, I get that FOX wants to launch new scripted on the back of something as highly rated as The Masked Singer, but fertility drama Not Just Me doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me. Poor name aside, it kind of just seems like a This Is Us knockoff that doesn’t command the urgency to watch live, especially with a tricky premise that wasn’t well-articulated in its trailer. While it’s probably something that could be amenable to family co-viewing, which could help with the transition from The Masked Singer, I would be surprised if it held a healthy portion of its lead-in considering the tonal differences.
