Most Surprising (Possible) Renewal: I’ll go a different place for this. ABC’s Household Name, executive produced by Amy Poehler and starring Carol Burnett, had a lot of buzz earlier in the development season, but in Deadline’s most recent pilot buzz article, it’s listed as a long-shot to make it to series. Where it’s co-produced by NBC and Relatively Happy has been pretty quiet during development, things are setting up for the show to move to NBC, where it would join Will & Grace. It would allow NBC to work with Poehler once again and give them a comedy that should at least do well with total viewers, but the reason that I put this in the surprise category is that it’s rare for completed pilots to move to other networks. Even with the vertical integration here, which tends to help projects that a studio believes in (e.g. Devious Maids, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, etc.), I would be at least a little surprised if both studios could come to an agreement on Household Name between now and upfronts.
Show That Likely Won’t Be Renewed But Should Be: I’m not sure that NBC has anything promising that’s looking like it’s on the wrong side of the bubble. Blindspot, Timeless, Trial & Error, and Taken all seem to be in contention, while the Chicagos, The Blacklist, and SVU are all shoe-ins for renewal. Great News took itself out of contention with a really weak second week, so the only thing remaining is The Blacklist: Redemption. And the only reason that should be renewed is if NBC doesn’t want 22 Blacklists but wants to have its time slot covered all season. Which doesn’t seem like something a network this full would/should do, so while NBC will renew at least one bubble show, I don’t think they’re going to have to reach to renew something like Redemption.
Possible Scheduling Disaster: A four-comedy lineup on Thursday feels like it could be a tonal mess. Superstore and The Good Place aren’t amazing matches on paper, but they more or less worked well together. Adding in a multi-cam that aired its first episode during the Clinton administration feels very whiplash-y, as I don’t know if the same people watching The Good Place are going to be watching Will & Grace. And where The Good Place isn’t an especially strong lead-in as it is, it’s kind of setting Will & Grace up for failure, whereas putting it on Wednesdays gives it the affiliate lead-in and gives it decent competition.
Possible Biggest Surprise: I would be surprised to see Will & Grace end up on Fridays. It would likely end up facing ABC multi-cams and its ratings ceiling would be drastically lowered airing on a lower-viewed night. I don’t think NBC brought the show back to be a marginal player or something that has a quiet, non-descript run; it revived Will & Grace to give them a quality multi-cam lead-in, a project with built-in awareness that could generate its own buzz in the march to fall. Will & Grace ending up on Fridays would say that they didn’t like how the show turned out, which wouldn’t make sense considering that they just gave the show an additional two episodes.
Safest Bet: Rise will air with This Is Us. Not only is it generating buzz in the trades, not only is it well-known that Bob Greenblatt loves himself some performing arts, the project has already gotten a series order, meaning that NBC is quite high on it and will try to give it the best situation possible to succeed. With how NBC has embraced variety entertainment and how Rise seems like a perfect lead-out for This Is Us, something would have to go very wrong between now and upfronts for Rise to miss out on a Tuesday berth, be it 9:00 or 10:00.
Project I’m Rooting For: I’m super curious about Shelter, a real time medical drama that focuses on the aftermath of a hurricane. I really don’t know what this show looks like going forward, whether this same hospital is going to be Grey’s Anatomy-ed and have stacks of disasters to deal with or if the entire first season is just about the fallout from the hurricane. Would a second season follow a different hospital? Could we be looking at one disaster a season? And what impact does the real time element have on the narrative and pacing? I’m not much of a medical drama guy, but I would be willing to check out something that shakes up a format that’s gotten more than a little dusty in recent years.
ESSENTIAL LINKS
Upfronts 2017: Assessing Each Network’s Needs
NBC’s 2016-2017 Schedule: Thoughts & Predictions
Analyzing the 2016 Fall Schedule: NBC
We’re running all five prediction articles on the same day this year! Find all of the networks below:
NBC – FOX – ABC – CBS – The CW
