THURSDAY
SHILO: 8:00 Neil Patrick Harris; 9:00 The Blacklist; 10:00 Heroes Reborn
CRAIG: 8:00 Heroes Reborn; 9:00 The Blacklist; 10:00 Chicago Med
SHILO: Pretty much anything would be an improvement over what NBC Thursdays from this past season, but in order to give The Blacklist an extra jump start following an underwhelming move from Mondays, I think NBC will concentrate two of their event programs on the night. The Neil Patrick Harris variety hour gets to avoid Empire while providing a broad viewer base for The Blacklist to feed off of, as the show is NBC trying to capture what makes The Voice such a phenomenon and further DVR-proof their schedule in the process. It’s solid enough counterprogramming in a weakening hour and something that ensures NBC won’t be wholly swallowed up by football like they were this season. At 10:00, I went with Heroes Reborn, mostly because the other slots it could have premiered in either had programming that could blunt its impact or didn’t make sense as far as flow. This way, the revival of NBC’s male-skewing genre drama will go against a procedural on CBS and a female-skewing soap on ABC, all the while improving its time slot with a compatible lead-in and further eventizing NBC’s fall schedule. The only worry I have about this schedule is that both series will go away at midseason, but I think Neil Patrick Harris and Heroes can bring enough eyes back to The Blacklist that launching programming around it might be easier than it was this past season.
CRAIG: Yes, Heroes Reborn would be on at the same time as The Big Bang Theory in my schedule, which could seriously hurt its chances, but I think it also would skew male enough that it might be a good drama alternative for the 8PM slot in the Fall. (Although, I would advise against NBC launching anything majorly male until after CBS is done with football… maybe they can run that Neil Patrick Harris variety show in 2 hour chunks for a few weeks to start?) In any event, a known favorite + a current favorite + a third night of Dick Wolf In Chicago might do nicely. Hey… a Chicago medical drama was a success for NBC on Thursdays at 10 for over a decade… if anything can bring back the “must see” to that 10PM hour, it might be another one like it. As for why I put Heroes on at 8… although it always did best as a 9:00 show, I think the sci-fi aspect might be more liked and watched by a bigger audience at an hour earlier than 10. Plus, Zachary Levi’s Chuck did very well for a good amount of time at 8.
And can I add that I don’t care what the haters say… I am ridiculously excited for Heroes Reborn. I worry a little that, if it does well, NBC will get greedy and want more; yet at the same time, there’s a part of me that’s hoping that is exactly what happens.
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Mysteries of Laura is low in the live demo, but high in overall viewers. And NBC’s “Woman Crush Wednesday” promotion seems to work. In total viewers, the show is NBC’s best result with in-season regularly-scheduled programming versus all regularly-scheduled competition in the Wednesday 8-9pm hour in more than five years. That counts for something.