MONDAY
CRAIG:Â 8:00 Dancing with the Stars; 10:00 Conviction
SHILO: 8:00 Dancing with the Stars; 10:00 Castle
CRAIG: Dancing With The Stars is staying put, but what about 10:00? Yes, there’s a temptation to let Castle finish its run where it’s always been, but it’s really time to build new hits. Conviction stars Hayley Atwell who has already been a great asset to ABC for her role in Agent Carter, but now is a chance for the rest of the world to see how good she is. What better way to do that than to come out of Dancing?
Perhaps at midseason, the show could take a backseat for another “big deal” show – Designated Survivor starring Kiefer Sutherland, which is already ordered to series.
SHILO: I don’t think ABC should bring Castle back in the fall, let alone leave it behind Dancing with the Stars. While Castle has weathered the storm this season and emerged as one of the network’s strongest 10:00 dramas, it’s likely going into its final season and shouldn’t be given prioritized scheduling on a network currently in rebuilding mode. However, upon doing umpteen variations of what ABC could look like in the fall, I kept doing too many moves and while ABC does need to make some changes, it felt like too many moves to promote at once. Therefore, I decided to stick Castle’s final season on Mondays at 10:00; ABC could’ve moved Castle off of Mondays any of the past few seasons, but they’ve been exceedingly loyal to the show, and the decision to fire Stana Katic and Tamala Jones shows that the network wants this show back by any means necessary. So I can’t really see them burning it off, as much as they maybe should at this point.
The silver lining here is that they would be able to premiere something new behind The Bachelor, which is stronger in the demo than Dancing with the Stars, and that show could air repeat free across two good lead-ins. I would go with something like Conviction, a character-based procedural with a strong female lead; it’s a nice bridge between ABC’s present brand and what they hope to become in the future, while it has a marketable cast and a premise amenable to sampling.
