CRAIG’S PREDICTIONS: 8:00 Superstore; 8:30 The Good Place; 9:00 The Carmichael Show; 9:30 Marlon; 10:00 The Blacklist
SHILO’S PREDICTIONS: 8:00 Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday; 9:00 The Blacklist; 10:00 Blindspot
ACTUAL SCHEDULE: 8:00 Superstore; 8:30 The Good Place; 9:00 Chicago Med; 10:00 The Blacklist
SHILO: First of all, props to you for calling not only Superstore on Thursdays at 8:00, but The Good Place at 8:30.
I still don’t really like this lineup, though. Yes, Superstore will get heaps of Olympic promotion this summer and yes, the comedies won’t have to face Big Bang Theory due to Thursday Night Football; Olympic promotion doesn’t mean much (ask Animal Practice, About a Boy, and Guys with Kids) and eventually, the comedies will have to face down Big Bang Theory, which seems extraordinarily self-defeating to me. NBC has had a miserable track record with comedy in recent seasons (partially due to their poor scheduling) and after blindly stumbling into a surprise success with Superstore, the right move isn’t to throw it at the biggest comedy on television and pair it with something niche and potentially off-putting like The Good Place. You nurture successes like this and give it support and stability; you don’t immediately ask it to stare down immense competition that took a huge bite out of your last Thursdays-at-8:00 comedy.
While The Blacklist to 10:00 is an okay move, as the show was suffering due to poor lead-ins and lead-outs, I don’t fully understand Chicago Med to 9:00. I know that NBC wants to spread the Chicago franchise throughout its schedule and not pool its strength onto 1-2 nights. And I totally get that, especially since ABC will be vulnerable now that Scandal is off the schedule until midseason. What I don’t get is why they sent something as new/green as Chicago Med and something that skews as female as this show does; Scandal is eventually going to come back and while it’s not the behemoth it once was, it’s still very strong, particularly in the sub-demos that Chicago Med targets. This feels like a move that was a season or two premature, as Chicago Med doesn’t even have a full season under its belt and wasn’t enough of a world beater this past season where it could take a sizeable hit and still be okay. If Notorious hits, or if Scandal comes back with renewed strength, this could be the first noticeable ding the Chicago franchise takes.
CRAIG: I like the idea of Superstore as a Big Bang alternative and there are certainly worse lead-outs one could have than The Good Place. The Chicago Med thing totally caught me by surprise, though. I also agree that such a move might’ve made more sense a year or two from now when Med is more established. But who knows? Chicago Med might be a comfortable show and it as a lead-in might help Blacklist return to some of its older numbers.
