WEDNESDAY
SHILO: 8:00 Survivor; 9:00 S.W.A.T.; 10:00 Criminal Minds
CRAIG: 8:00 Survivor; 9:00 Criminal Minds; 10:00 S.W.A.T.
SHILO: Honestly, I’m just going to keep predicting they move Criminal Minds to 10:00 until they do it. Survivor is one of the strongest lead-ins on the network right now and wasting it on a decade-old drama that you don’t own feels a little dumb and not in line with the rest of the CBS’s recent scheduling decisions. With Minds and Law & Order: SVU cannibalizing one another, though Minds has looked better this spring, and no Minds lead-out being able to break out, I think it’s time that CBS gets some fresh blood in the 9:00 hour. I went with S.W.A.T., a procedural starring Minds favorite Shemar Moore; not only is this a similar strategy to what CBS did with Bull/NCIS, the idea of putting an action-y crime drama following Survivor feels right. I do wonder about having a show with a POC lead face off with Empire, but that show is on the down side of its trajectory and I think the differences in tone/target audience should be enough to keep S.W.A.T. from being swallowed by its slot.
CRAIG: Much like how Bull was helped by having an alum from NCIS as the lead, I think Shemar Moore starring in S.W.A.T. is a great opportunity for the aging Criminal Minds audience to check out his new show. I predict, though, that they’ll start it at 10:00 rather than 9:00; however, when CBS finally gets tired of renewing Criminal Minds, that something like S.W.A.T. totally will take it’s place in the 9PM hour. But for right now, I think it’d work best behind Minds.
