SHONDASDAY
Shilo’s Picks: 8:00 Grey’s Anatomy, 9:00 How To Get Away With Murder, 10:00 Scandal
Craig’s Picks: 8:00 Grey’s Anatomy, 9:00 How To Get Away With Murder, 10:00 Scandal
Actual Schedule: 8:00 Grey’s Anatomy, 9:00 Scandal, 10:00 How To Get Away With Murder
CRAIG: We almost got that one, except Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder are switched. That’s kind of a bold move, considering Scandal was probably a good lead-in to the news, and of course, it was popular appointment television.
SHILO: The only thing I’m not sure about regarding ABC’s Shonda Night is Scandal being at 9:00. And that uncertainty doesn’t even come from content worries, since Rhimes recently tweeted that she’ll make no changes to the way she approaches the political soap. It’s that Scandal’s audience is similar to Pretty Little Liars and The Vampire Diaries, in that they’re very socially engaged by the cast live tweeting and one the episode ends, they hit the internet to talk about it among other fans. Scandal might be putting up big numbers, but how much of that audience will be willing to watch another emotionally taxing drama right after? How much of Scandal’s audience only tunes in to ABC Thursdays to watch Scandal and will ABC be able to get even a portion of those viewers to stick around for another Shonda drama?
How to Get Away With Murder should likely get some good sampling, but with a lower ceiling than it would have at 9:00 and the possibility that people who watch Scandal only want to watch Scandal, it might not be the sure thing that it seems to be.
FRIDAY
Shilo’s Picks: 8:00 Last Man Standing, 8:30 Saint Francis, 9:00 Shark Tank, 10:00 20/20
Craig’s Picks: 8:00 Last Man Standing, 8:30 The Winklers, 9:00 Shark Tank, 10:00 20/20
Actual Schedule: 8:00 Last Man Standing, 8:30 Cristela, 9:00 Shark Tank, 10:00 20/20
CRAIG: We really couldn’t predict that 8:30 slot, even though we got the rest of the night right. Cristela could go either way, I think… it could do really well with the Last Man Standing lead-in, or, those people might not care.
SHILO: When making my initial predictive schedule, I thought that ABC would go for concept over all and bring pilot Saint Francis to Fridays. The Neighbors wasn’t a good match in terms of tone, humor, and sensibility, so why not go for as close a match to Last Man Standing as possible? Instead, they use highly-testing Cristela on a lowly viewed night for broadcast, which was something of a surprise since I figured they would want to utilize that broad appeal on a night they were having more trouble on. While the new multi-cam looks to be a tonal fit with Last Man, I’m just not sure the people who watch Last Man Standing are going to want to watch a show like Cristela; if that happens, ABC’s just thrown away a perfectly good potential long-term player trying to make a good night better.
Next: Navigate below to see what did [or didn’t] stand out for us, and to see how accurately we predicted the schedule overall!
