FRIDAY
SHILO: 8:00 The Blacklist; 9:00 Dateline; 10:00 Chicago Justice
CRAIG: 8:00 Dateline; 9:00 Timeless; 10:00 The Blacklist
SHILO: I’ll admit that I have no idea what NBC’s going to do on Fridays. This past season, they definitely zigged when I thought they were going to zag, opting for Caught on Camera and two hours of Dateline in lieu of anything scripted. So I would not be surprised in the least if they ended up putting more First Dates or something on fall Fridays and punting to midseason. I ended up going with two hours of scripted, though; The Blacklist because I think it’s going to get a full season and it’s ran out of weekday real estate and Chicago Justice because its older skew would be a good match for both Fridays and Dateline. I almost went with Chicago Justice replacing Will & Grace circa January, just because I wasn’t sure if moving something so new to Fridays this early would be the right thing to do, but I have a feeling that NBC will want all four Chicago dramas airing all season together and I’d be surprised if they brought Will & Grace back only to air it on Fridays.
CRAIG: Friday night is the night where I probably made my boldest scheduling move: Slotting Timeless on Fridays at 9. NBC needs a genre show now that Grimm is gone, and I think Timeless could benefit from an earlier time in the night. As for The Blacklist, I always viewed it as a 10:00 show, and so I have scheduled it as such. Both Timeless and Blacklist come from Sony TV so maybe they could be packaged together… and a Timeless renewal could make up for not renewing the Blacklist spinoff.
