The Bermuda Triangle of NBC Scheduling
May 7, 2007 by Kath Skerry
Want to know the quickest way to be sure that a TV show won’t succeed? Put it in the Monday 10pm time slot on NBC. Many have tried and all have failed. Just this season alone we’ve said “hello” and “goodbye” to STUDIO 60, THE BLACK DONNELLYS, and now THE REAL WEDDING CRASHERS. Despite NBC’s ratings woes you would think the 10pm slot would do at least “ok” considering its lead in is HEROES. But nope. Now the question remains why. Is it the quality of the shows they have tried out on the schedule? Is it the competition? Or perhaps NBC is trying out their new “sampler” programming on the unsuspecting audience. You know…give us just a taste of some decent shows and then yank them away before we can find out whether we really like them or not.
No matter what the reason, NBC can’t afford to have another failed show this season. Taste being subjective, I personally thought both STUDIO 60 and THE BLACK DONNELLYS to be compelling television, and most importantly different than what we were getting from the other networks. The writing was fantastic, the acting impressive yet both shows lost their battle with the audience. Why?
NBC is announcing it’s fall schedule on May 14th. I’d be worried if I were the producer of the show that landed in that dark timeslot. I guess we’re just going to have to wait and see. Best of luck to you…whoever you are. For now, let’s just hope that LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT can help out NBC when it takes over the doomed timeslot starting next Monday night.
You love TV. You probably even love NBC and perhaps the shows that have tried to succeed at 10pm on Mondays. Any thoughts on why shows just can’t stick there?
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Possibly because of CSI: Miami…. although I dislike that show (Horatio irks me)…. but I enjoyed Studio 60 and was so sad that it never really caught on. But, I blame it on Miami, because that is a huge ratings grabber…
I think those shows failed there because they weren’t very goo. i know you liked them, so it’s only a matter opinion. Studio 60, BD, Wedding Crashers, just not good.
Either way, NBC should’ve stuck by Studio 60 if they wanted a hit there. The show was picked up for the season when they took it off and put on BD. Keep the show there so people will stay with it and new people will come to it.
The competition wasn’t that steep. What about Brian? never did much better than S60. CSI:Miami was a big hit, Studio 60 is good counter programming.
Heroes is great, a does well, but it hasn’t been enough to keep people away from CSI: Cleveland or where ever.
Also, they should find a better match for a post-Heroes programming. I didn’t watch Heroes… but from what I have seen, it probably didn’t attract the same people that Studio 60 was… so, if they had another similar but different type show there… like, enough that they were at least the same audience for Heroes, but obviously different enough, that would probably help.
I thought the one night that FNL was in that timeslot that it did pretty well (at least for FNL standards)… I *think* that maybe they got 8-9 million viewers? Have these other shows gotten more than that each week, though? It would have been interesting to see how FNL would have done a few more weeks in that slot. But then again, it may have suffered the fate of all the other shows and been taken off the air completely.
Yeah, mg714, I was actually glad when they decided to move FNL to Wed, because it seemed like the Monday slot was a show killer, but if it did those numbers, that is a step up, so maybe it should go there? Heck, I don’t know, I just want to hear it’s coming back!
It has to do more with the time than the day, there are just less eyeballs at 10:00 because a good chuck of the TV audience, myself included, like to be asleep by 11:00. That’s why 9:00 shows can have multiple hits on at the same time, but you rarely see one ratings hit on at 10:00 let alone two at the same time. NBC would have been better off letting Studio 60 say at Thursday at 9:00 as orginally planned just because there are a lot more eyeballs to go around than Monday at 10:00.
The concept of a lead in doesn’t work when you’re talking about a show like Heroes. When that show is over people are exhausted and their brains can’t hold anymore – no way are they staying on to watch the next show.
They should just run Heroes twice.
Perhaps we should blame the lead-in show, Heroes, for the disaster of 10pm Mondays? Maybe the 10-year-old-comic-book-reading-male demographic for Heroes can’t stay up past 10pm???
The one week that FNL took S60’s spot, it did worse than S60 usually did, but it did better than FNL usually did.
If I were to give both those shows advice it would be:
Studio 60 – make the show more about the underlings. The swaggering, successful bosses are boring. Make DL Hughly and Nate Corrdry and Lucy Davis the stars and I bet it does better.
Black Donnellys – Drop the narration. Give Olivia Wilde’s character a sense of humor, to lighten things up and add a couple of new characters who are not Irish or Italian to make it seem less always the same thing.
I blame it on the 10:00 news (Fox or CW, you pick). hehe
Seriously though, a lot of people like to be asleep by 11:00 so they want to get their news, weather and sports recaps at 10:00.
I think that they should move Heroes to 10:00 Monday night. I think that after watching Heroes that people are drained. It is full of storylines and plots changing and then afterwards all the Herofiles run to their computers to write blogs and posts (present company excluded :)).
I also think that after Heroes, people watch 24 that they have taped and that makes up their tv viewing for Monday night (or vice versa). I remember that Studio 60 WAS THE SHOW TO BEAT in the offseason. I LOVE What About Brian and would choose to watch that. However, when fall comes around again, they will have to do something on Monday again with the return of Monday Night Football. Maybe they will put Deal or No Deal there.