CRAIG: 8:00 The Middle; 8:30 Fresh Off the Boat; 9:00 SHIELD Spin-Off; 10:00 Castle
SHILO: 8:00 black-ish; 8:30 Fresh Off the Boat; 9:00 SHIELD Spin-Off; 10:00 Agents of SHIELD
CRAIG: The Middle has anchored Wednesday nights for so long, but maybe now is time for something new and strong to get Tuesdays rolling. Fresh Off the Boat has done decently on Tuesday nights, so I gave it the 8:30 spot. For 9:00, I’m suggesting something a little different: Starting things off with the Agents of SHIELD spinoff, supposedly starring Adrianne Palicki and Nick Blood, rather than the mothership series itself. Why? Having a female lead might get some of the women back to Tuesday nights, and then once a fall run of the spin-off is done, the Agents of SHIELD series could have an uninterrupted run from January to May. Everyone wins.
At 10:00, I finally did it. I moved Castle. Hopefully Stana Katic is still on board, but in any event, Marvel and Castle should have always been destined to pair, though I will really, really miss Forever if it’s gone.
SHILO: Another year, another completely rejiggered ABC Tuesday schedule. Fresh Off the Boat did well enough this spring to stay on the fall schedule and receive a solid lead-in; I went with black-ish because black-ish is strong enough in the demo to be a lead-in and Fresh Off the Boat is one of ABC’s most male skewing comedies, making it an optimal lead-in for the Marvel shows. But I could just as easily see The Middle on Tuesdays, since ABC might want to protect black-ish for another season given it’s their only in-house comedy and it’s produced some promising results this season. The SHIELD/SHIELD spin-off combination is honestly a shot in the dark, so it could be wildly, wildly different from what ABC actually decides to do. My thinking is that the ceiling on the spin-off would be too low at 10:00 and that ABC will use it on the fall schedule to justify pushing SHIELD to 10:00; I know that SHIELD is strong in male sub-demos and those are likely what got the spin-off ordered in the first place, but having the spin-off at 9:00 gives it better exposure to the audience who might’ve dropped SHIELD, especially with the stronger 8:00 hour, and could allow it to buoy SHIELD, making the shift to 10:00 more seamless. ABC won’t be able to make progress on Tuesdays unless they make some drastic changes and one of them needs to be seizing the vulnerable 9:00 hour, which isn’t possible as long as SHIELD remains the night’s centerpiece.
