SHILO: 8:00 The Resident; 9:00 Empire
CRAIG: 8:00 Showtime at the Apollo; 9:00 Empire
SHILO: The pre-Empire drama slot is always weird. FOX went with Rosewood during the 2015-16 season because of how amenable it was for casual viewing and how it also had a POC as a lead; instead of going with soapy baseball drama Pitch this past season, they went with buddy cop dramedy Lethal Weapon. So predicting what they do here is tough, even with shallow drama development. While I could see Controversy, a legal drama about a sex scandal at a prestigious university, here, I think that show might be too serious in subject matter and too limited in premise for a fall launch in this particular slot. Therefore, I think we’ll see medical drama The Resident here; FOX is rumored to really be in the market for a medical drama for next year and while the Empire pre-tune effect has mostly fizzled out, placing what should be a casual viewer-friendly female-skewing drama against a show that skews very female should be about the best position The Resident could be in. If FOX is going to get a medical drama off the ground, using Empire is about the best way they could go about it.
CRAIG: FOX is planning to run Showtime at the Apollo as a regular series, and it gets me to thinking: What better than a show about people with talent leading into a drama about people with talent? Assuming American Idol really does go to ABC and not back to FOX, it would give the network another reality-talent franchise, and I think Apollo and Empire would pair well and hopefully strengthen each other. It’s also a known quantity so you don’t have to launch something brand new every night.
