FURTHER THOUGHTS FROM SHILO
Most Surprising Possible Renewal: While I will forever love Debra Messing, if The Mysteries of Laura gets renewed, you could knock me over with a feather. Its renewal would be a testament to the kind of season NBC had, considering that they’d be picking up a freshman show they don’t own, that’s already slipped below a 1.0 in the demo, and that doesn’t have an ounce of acclaim. It’s not close enough to syndication for them to take a reach renewal for it and moving it to Friday would be disastrous.
Show That Likely Won’t Be Renewed But Should Be: I thought About a Boy was given a bit of a raw deal this season. To be fair, it put up pretty dreadful numbers, so its cancellation isn’t that egregious on the surface. It’s just that NBC did a lot to counteract the success the show had last season by pushing it to a late-ish hour for a family comedy and pairing it with Marry Me, a polarizing relationship comedy with a very niche-y sense of humor. NBC should have found a way to nurture one of the few comedy “veterans” they had, one in which they own and one whose creator they have a strong relationship with.
Possible Scheduling Disaster: There are two things to look out for – how NBC handles their comedies and what they do on Wednesdays. Comedy compatibility killed them this season, so if the comedies on the 2015 fall schedule don’t gel together, and the lead-in doesn’t work with The Voice’s audience, it could be another long season for NBC. Also, NBC needs to avoid Empire like the plague; attempting to launch something new against FOX’s latest Death Star, especially if it’s something like the Neil Patrick Harris hour, would be suicide.
Possible Biggest Surprise: Honestly, NBC is in such a state that I don’t think anything would be too surprising at this point. I know that they want to expand their comedy reach, but I would be fairly surprised if they found a way to incorporate a second hour onto their schedule, given CBS’ strength on Thursdays and ABC’s strength on Wednesdays.
Safest Bet: Chicago Med will be on this fall. The ratings for the backdoor pilot were good and NBC can’t afford to keep any trump cards in their deck, not after the year they’ve had thus far. And after all, it’s Dick Wolf’s world and we’re all just living in it.
Biggest Need: Comedy. NBC might have cornered the syndication market thanks to the Chicago franchise, but the fact that they’re as shallow in comedy as they are right now is astounding. Their most tenured comedies ended this season with 33 and 23 episodes, respectively, and they have absolutely no comedy identity to speak of. CBS is raunchy multi-cams; ABC is single camera family comedies; and FOX is animation and hang out comedies, so NBC needs to figure out who it is if it has any hopes at finding a comedy foothold in 2015-2016.
SHILO’s SCHEDULE
SUNDAY 7:00 Football Night in America; 8:15 Sunday Night Football
MONDAY 8:00 The Voice; 10:00 Chicago Med
TUESDAY 8:00 The Voice; 9:00 Not Safe For Work; 9:30 Undateable; 10:00 Chicago Fire
WEDNESDAY 8:00 Law & Order: SVU; 9:00 Shades of Blue; 10:00 Chicago PD
THURSDAY 8:00 Neil Patrick Harris; 9:00 The Blacklist; 10:00 Heroes Reborn
FRIDAY 8:00 Dateline; 9:00 Warrior; 10:00 Grimm
Only one more page! Some final thoughts from Craig:
1 Comment
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.