You never know what a fall schedule revealed at upfronts will look like come next season. Moves you initially balked at could work; moves you fell in love with could fall apart. Trailers only give you an idea of what a show will be like, so forming an opinion about a schedule really only becomes feasible once you know what type of ammunition a network is holding in the chamber. It’s a tough time to know how to feel as a television fan, being presented all this information with no idea if anything will work or if the trailer you like will turn out to be a good show, but that sense of not knowing is part of what makes upfronts so much fun. Also fun are KSiteTV’s Craig Byrne and Shilo Adams, who, for the fourth year in a row, will be dissecting each network’s fall schedule. In addition to trying to pick apart every night on every schedule, the two will be naming everything from best trailer to worst scheduling move, as upfronts is about more than just the X’s and O’s of the schedule itself.
Before you dig into the article, though, check out links to our initial scheduling predictions, our fall analysis, and ABC’s trailers below.
2016-2017 Scheduling Predictions: NBC | FOX | ABC | CBS | The CW
2016-2017 Fall Analysis: NBC | FOX | CBS
Trailers: Secrets & Lies | Conviction | American Housewife | Speechless | Designated Survivor | Notorious | Downward Dog | Imaginary Mary | Time After Time | Still Star-Crossed
SUNDAY
CRAIG’S PREDICTIONS: 7:00 America’s Funniest Home Videos; 8:00 Once Upon a Time; 9:00 Time After Time; 10:00 Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD
SHILO’S PREDICTIONS: 7:00 America’s Funniest Home Videos; 8:00 The Goldbergs; 8:30 Dream Team; 9:00 Once Upon a Time; 10:00 Quantico
ACTUAL SCHEDULE: 7:00 America’s Funniest Home Videos; 8:00 Once Upon a Time; 9:00 Secrets & Lies; 10:00 Quantico
CRAIG: I still think Quantico could grow more on a different night, though I’m happy that it at least seems like Time After Time will end up on Sundays at midseason.
Secrets & Lies being at 9:00 should at least keep from the oily bleeding ABC had last Fall, though I can’t help but think something a little more family-friendly could follow the Disney characters on Once. As for Once Upon A Time at 8, it works. It might not be as much of a critical or ratings hit as it once was, but it is a pretty solid player and very on-brand.
SHILO: The combination of Scandal being pushed to midseason and me reading too many fantasy schedules caused me to shy away from putting Secrets & Lies on Sundays. I thought that ABC would put something on Thursdays that would finish by the time Scandal came back and where Secrets & Lies was specifically held for fall, I assumed that it would get the time slot upgrade. While that domino effect, which also caused me to pull the second hour of comedies I originally had on Tuesdays, was bad for my predictions, it was very good for ABC, as I think they come out much better with this being their Sunday schedule. This isn’t going to be a world beating schedule for them, but I think Secrets & Lies should be an improvement over The Family and Blood & Oil, thereby giving Quantico its strongest lead-in to date, while not forcing the Juliette Lewis-starring drama to deal with an extended midseason hiatus. Airing in one of the toughest slots on broadcast television, Quantico did well without ever getting a decent lead-in, so even if Secrets & Lies stays around the low 1.0s in the demo, it should keep the show from diving too much in the fall.
So ABC Sundays really comes down to what Once Upon a Time does. If the show can put together an arc that appeals to the show’s casual fans (or those who don’t even watch the show) like the Frozen arc did, the night would be a win for ABC. This past half-season didn’t have the new Disney integration that past successes did and when you’re an aging show like Once Upon a Time is, you need to play upon stuff like that in order to extend your life span and help the rest of the night on which you are. Playing to the die hards makes sense when you don’t have the type of intellectual property at your fingertips that Once does, so hopefully what the show has planned for the fall will be broad enough to entice people to come back.
