Community, Whitney Premiere Dates Delayed
Joel McHale, Whitney Cummings
The Friday-night premieres for both Community and Whitney have been delayed, TVGuide.com has learned.
The two comedies were slated to premiere on Friday, Oct. 19, but a source says NBC decided to push their debuts in order to maximize promotional efforts for both series. There's no word yet on when Community and Whitney will return, but in the meantime, repeats of Grimm will air in the hour-long vacant timeslot.
Vote for your favorite new TV shows in our Fall Popularity Contest!
"Given the success we've had for the past four weeks — including winning the first week of the season in A18-49 — we've decided to continue to concentrate our promotional strength on our new NBC shows that are scheduled Monday through Wednesday and have therefore decided to hold Community and Whitney from their previously announced premieres of October 19th," the network said in a statement. "Without having to launch these comedies on Friday at this time, we can keep our promotion focused on earlier in the week -- plus we will have both comedies in our back pocket if we need to make any schedule changes on those nights. When we have a better idea of viewing patterns in the next few weeks, we will announce new season premieres of Whitney and Community."
The last-minute news comes as Community is heading into its first season without creator Dan Harmon, who was very publicly replaced by Moses Port and David Guarascio. This is the second time Community's premiere date has been changed at the last minute: The cult comedy was left off NBC's midseason schedule last season, finally returning in late March.
Are you sad that Community and Whitney won't be back on time?