CRAIG: At 8PM, Junior Masterchef or whatever Gordon Ramsey project they happen to want to show at that time of year. At 9PM, well, FOX is stuck with 24 episodes of Glee for next year, and it’s pulling, frankly, CW numbers. If they have to run them – and who knows, they might do well on DVR or On Demand – Friday nights might be the place to just let Glee finish out its run. And, hey, it might be a good alternative to CBS’ older-skewing programming and NBC’s genre offerings.
SHILO: MasterChef Junior was a surprise success last fall for FOX, giving its Friday a nice boost while proving itself resilient in the face of a rocky schedule. As such, it should return to the night and become a nice bridge series between summer/early fall and post-baseball FOX, helping to steady the network in the face of the baseball postseason. 9:00 would go the (rumored) 24-episode final season of Glee, keeping the show from doing damage to any other series on the schedule. Due to FOX’s year-round programming initiative, I could see a certain amount of these episodes airing in the summer, further neutralizing what are likely to be disastrous ratings, but the network did in fact give the series a two-season renewal and I don’t see them completely tucking it away on Saturdays/in the summer.
OTHER STUFF/MIDSEASON
CRAIG: FOX has so many good projects in development this year, and their midseason schedule always seems to change anyway, so I can’t even begin to speculate what they might do. Hieroglyph, Gracepoint, The Following, the reality series Utopia, and of course, the return of American Idol are just the start. I almost wish FOX (or any network, really) would think about an actual concentrated Saturday schedule again, but those days may be long gone. So, midseason it is for many of these shows, many of which sound great.
SHILO: FOX shifted its schedule enough times this past season to where predicting their midseason plans for 2014-2015 is a fool’s errand. In addition to the new shows I placed on my fantasy schedule, they have Red Band Society, Empire, Gracepoint, Hieroglyph, Last Man on Earth, and Weird Loners waiting in the wings, with comedy Cabot College reportedly being eyed for midseason and The Following heading into its third season come January. The Mindy Project and Mulaney each have less than 22 episodes, so two comedies should be slotted along with Brooklyn Nine-Nine and New Girl sometime in 2015; The Following would bump Gotham, assuming the latter gets 22 episodes, into the 8:00 hour once Sleepy Hollow concludes its second season, while American Idol gets its results show cut in a Dancing with the Stars-style reality shrink and subs in for Utopia come next year.
Red Band Society, Empire, Gracepoint, and Hieroglyph, meanwhile, will have their airing depend on several factors – how many episodes Glee airs in-season, whether Backstrom is a 22-episode show or not, how many hours the network dedicates to American Idol, how FOX opts to use Utopia, etc.
One more page to navigate to for our compiled schedules:
