Continued from two previous pages
FRIDAY
CRAIG: This is where my own personal schedule and the official schedule will probably be incredibly different: I’d put The Originals on at 8PM Fridays. I don’t buy this idea that people won’t watch on that night; Smallville did really well for The CW, and Grimm has been one of the only NBC shows that has actually worked out in recent times. If The Originals can be heavily promoted during the previous night’s Vampire Diaries, fans will come back…. I think. I hope.
We are definitely in agreement, it seems, that The Originals leading off the night is a very good thing, whichever night it may be.
At 9PM, I’d wrap up Nikita in the Fall with 6-13 episodes as have been rumored, and then around January I’d give Beauty And The Beast a huge launch with 22 episodes airing back to back without repeat interruptions. I know it’s a long wait, but the fan love for this show could weather it.
In the event that Warner Bros. and The CW agree on a full season for Nikita, I might recommend this: Do the 6-13 in the Fall, and then run the rest, uninterrupted, as summer programming. I’d love to have an epic Nikita “mini-season” at a time people aren’t watching TV, especially as many episodes are like high-octane summer action movies as they are.
SHILO: The venerable reality franchise America’s Next Top Model managed to extend its life span with a cost-cutting makeover and a fairly successful move to Fridays last season, a move that allowed the network to fill space during the fall and focus on launching its scripted pilots. Given that a premiere date has yet to be announced for Top Model, one can assume that it will be arriving later than The CW’s other summer offerings, the latest of which debuts July 29th. Therefore, the show is likely to begin sometime in August, again pushing into the fall season and securing its finale a place in November sweeps.
While reruns have been airing with Hart of Dixie during the month of April, I think that the show will return to Fridays and give The CW another shot at launching scripted programming during the week. The show is extremely cheap for going into its 20th season this summer and an August premiere would allow them to concentrate promotion there and leave it be once the season starts. The 8:00 slot is more valuable on The CW than the 9:00 slot, due to the impact that affiliate programming can have, and since the show still has life in it, you give Tyra and company a chance to further solidify its new era. Unlike Nikita, which is heading into its final season, reportedly set to feature somewhere between 6 and 13 episodes. While the show has done better at 8:00 than 9:00 since moving forward this past November, its audience is its audience at this point and the fact that it’s ending this calendar year means that ratings are no longer a concern. Let the show have the creative freedom to end on its own terms and please the extremely dedicated fanbase that’s got it this far, but it doesn’t need to take up a slot that could benefit another show.
The CW will have nothing on Fridays this midseason once Top Model goes back into hibernation and Nikita signs off for good, so they need to shoot for the best tonal match they can find to hold up the night. Oxygen doesn’t seem like it’ll be a mass hit, but it gives off the vibe that it’ll have a small but loyal fanbase that would follow it wherever it goes. The solution, should a post-Vampire Diaries slot not work out? Fridays, where genre shows have shown the ability to survive with lesser ratings expectations and a television landscape not quite as crowded. Given the show’s youth and likely youth-heavy skew (a’la The Secret Circle), it should be placed in the 8:00 hour, where more of its audience could find it and it’ll be cradled between the affiliates and Beauty and the Beast, which would assume 9:00. The two shows are the type of fantasy romances embedded deep in the network’s DNA and should feed off of one another, with Beauty’s stability this season (and procedural nature) making it a prime target for the tougher 9:00 slot.
QUESTION MARKS
CRAIG: I have no idea when America’s Next Top Model will be returning to The CW schedule, but it may have to be accommodated, since I didn’t find a place for it. And, if Whose Line Is It Anyway? does incredibly well in the summer, as it very likely could, what then? Could they do a Whose Line/Top Model night, maybe? That would throw most of my fantasy schedule off.
Also, I know that in my schedule, I have four new shows launching in the Fall, when The CW usually has only three. That might be a challenge marketing wise, but then again, The Originals is already pre-sold to an audience, at least… my main thinking with that is that if things launch in the Fall, they can ride the synergy from Comic-Con and other events through to September and October when things launch. Otherwise, we might run into another Cult where the midseason shows are largely forgotten about even after positive previews at SDCC.
SHILO: Which shows will get partial episode orders? The CW President Mark Pedowitz has expressed interest in running the network more like a cable channel, in that not every show would get 22 episodes a year. Of course, veterans like Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries won’t have to deal with such pressures, but it should be interesting to see how the network tackles this latest crop of new shows in terms of episode orders. For example, is The 100 pretty much guaranteed a capped number of episodes per season? If so, what replaces it following Arrow? (My guess: The Tomorrow People is held for midseason, Oxygen stays behind The Vampire Diaries, and something unscripted or encores joins Beauty and the Beast on Fridays.)
Is a strong online performance enough to save The Carrie Diaries? Rumors have been swirling that The CW could renew each of its bubble shows due to a variety of factors, with The Carrie Diaries being touted as having strong online numbers. Of course, there’s no way to know just how good the numbers are, how much money The CW makes from streaming, or what impact it has on renewal decisions at this point, so the decision on The Carrie Diaries will be indicative of where the network’s at in that regard. Hart of Dixie’s online numbers, for example, are extremely strong and likely helped it to pull ahead of The Secret Circle last season, so does The CW have another soap that could perform well for them on other avenues in The Carrie Diaries?
Will The CW break up Arrow and Supernatural? I completely get the argument for keeping the two genre shows together. Arrow’s done quite well for the network, but it’s not been quite at the level that The Vampire Diaries was at its peak, which were undeniable numbers that demanded to be used on a new series. Keeping Supernatural behind it would give it security for any potential sophomore slump and keep whatever drop the show will presumably suffer soft, ensuring that at least once night on the schedule won’t have any trouble on it. However, I think that The CW has leaned so hard on genre pilots that they have to use their three big pieces (Supernatural, Arrow, and The Vampire Diaries) to launch shows, particularly if they’re going to move Hart of Dixie off of Tuesdays and pair Beauty and the Beast up with another mid-level performer or a new show.
The CW will announce their Fall 2013 schedule on May 16. Watch KSiteTV for that as soon as it is announced. And now, you’re probably wanting to see what we have down, without all the commentary, right? Here goes:
CRAIG’S SCHEDULE
MONDAY
8PM Hart Of Dixie
9PM The Carrie Diaries (13 episodes); The Selection/Reign (midseason)
TUESDAY
8PM Oxygen
9PM Supernatural
WEDNESDAY
8PM Arrow
9PM Tomorrow People
THURSDAY
8PM The Vampire Diaries
9PM The 100
FRIDAY
8PM The Originals
9PM Nikita (6-13 episodes; Fall) Beauty And The Beast (22 episodes straight, January)
SHILO’S SCHEDULE
MONDAY
8PM Beauty And The Beast; Reign (midseason)
9PM Hart Of Dixie
TUESDAY
8PM The Originals
9PM Supernatural
WEDNESDAY
8PM Arrow
9PM The 100
THURSDAY
8PM The Vampire Diaries
9PM Oxygen; Tomorrow People (midseason)
FRIDAY
8PM America’s Next Top Model; Oxygen (midseason)
9PM Nikita; Beauty And The Beast (midseason)