Now that the dust has settled...
Now that the dust has settled a bit on all the 2006 mid-season changes that will be kicking in as soon as the holidays are over, here's my night-by-night scorecard of the imminent battles we'll be covering a month or so from now.
Monday
The big news is the return of 24 on Fox, with a four-hour blast January 15-16, followed by all-new episodes through the rest of the season. For the first two months, Skating with Celebrities (a rip-off of Dancing with the Stars) will be 24's lead-in. But come mid-March, Prison Break will return. What a one-two punch that promises to be!
CBS will coast along by capping off its popular comedies with CSI: Miami. The only change: Out of Practice goes on temporary hiatus, with Jenna Elfman's sight-unseen sitcom filling in.
Saying goodbye forever to Monday Night Football, ABC targets the female demographic with two reality anchors sandwiching two romantic comedies: Wife Swap leading into a combo of Emily's Reasons Why Not (starring Heather Graham) and Jake in Progress (starring John Stamos). Smartly going with reality counterprogramming against crime-drama juggernaut CSI: Miami and strong No. 2 Medium, ABC tries another edition of the we-thought-it-was-dead The Bachelor, this time set in Paris.
Toughest time period: 9 pm/ET, with 24, Two and a Half Men, Las Vegas and the cute Emily fighting for viewers.
Tuesday
What a tough night.
The big news, again on Fox, is the return of American Idol, with a long string of audition and semifinals episodes before we get to the real meat of the show sometime in February or March. House is staying in the spot where it became a smash hit on Idol's coattails a year ago. Fox will rule.
As usual, the 9 pm/ET time period is going to be very crowded. Joining worthy contenders House and Commander in Chief, NBC finally brings back Scrubs with back-to-back new episodes. This will fill an hour that used to be occupied by My Name Is Earl and The Office, which have now relocated to Thursdays. (Why NBC continues to have more faith in The Office, keeping it yoked to Earl, than in Scrubs is an ongoing puzzle.) And CBS is filling the gap between cycles of The Amazing Race with the enjoyable romantic dramedy Love Monkey (starring Ed's affable Tom Cavanagh), and it will be interesting to see if CBS' crime-thirsty audience will embrace a show so outside the formula.
Adding juice to the 10 pm/ET hour is the return of FX's The Shield, with Forest Whitaker joining the cast as Vic's new nemesis. I imagine I'll fall even farther behind on Boston Legal and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as a result.
Wednesday
Another night directly impacted by Idol, which will be paired initially with Bones at 9 pm/ET (against Lost!), and then when the results-show format kicks in (moving to 9), Bones will move to 8 (a much kinder time period for it) and Idol will be paired with some no-doubt-forgettable comedy.
UPN fills the gap between cycles of America's Next Top Model with the new soap South Beach leading into the eternally underwatched Veronica Mars. Considering how miserably the network's last soap did (Sex, Love & Secrets), I'm hoping it won't be long before Tyra is wrangling a new set of girls.
NBC marks time before February's Winter Olympics by airing stand-alone episodes of The Biggest Loser in between E-Ring and Law & Order. Wouldn't it have been smarter for the network to restore The West Wing to its former roost, even for a short period of time? It's dying on Sundays.
Thursday
It's about time. NBC restores a two-hour comedy block to Thursdays, presumably bouncing the fading The Apprentice to another night after the Olympics. But unlike in the peacock's glory days, only one of the four comedies are truly "must-see." Leaving Scrubs out of the lineup seems especially foolish, though kicking Joey to the curb is long overdue. The terrific My Name Is Earl is being asked to do battle against CSI, instead of kicking off the night in the old Friends slot. (The dying Will & Grace gets that honor, paired with the dumb-guy sitcom Four Kings, from the same producers.) As on Tuesdays this fall, Earl is paired with the incompatible The Office, which has improved this season but not enough to take on the CBS juggernaut. (Again, why not pair Earl with Scrubs?) Still, Earl should have some impact on the night.
Fox also moves comedies to its Thursday dead zone at 9 pm/ET, with the past-its-prime That '70s Show and the ratings-deflated Stacked following The O.C., in the vain hope of holding on to the elusive young demographic that The O.C. still kind of attracts.
Meanwhile, ABC takes advantage of a short Survivor hiatus to bring back last summer's surprise camp hit Dancing With the Stars for a second go-round, followed by yet another comedy contender (ABC's manic Crumbs) in the 9:30 pm/ET time period. That makes four networks (counting UPN) trying to lure audiences with comedy on Thursdays. And yet it will be CBS, as always, that gets the last laugh.
Friday
NBC's Kevin Reilly showed a bit of his old FX moxie when he ordered the offbeat The Book of Daniel into series production, but his ardor quickly cooled, resulting in a shortened episode order and the unfortunate scheduling of Daniel into a tough 10 pm/ET time period. It's a shame. This one's a gem. This whimsical family drama is about an embattled Episcopal priest (Aidan Quinn) who talks regularly to Jesus when not contending with domestic and church-administration crises. The blue-chip cast also includes Ellen Burstyn as Daniel's boss and Once and Again's luminous Susanna Thompson as his martini-prone wife. Enjoy while you can.
Daniel's competition doesn't merely include one of CBS' 1,001 popular crime procedurals, Numbers, but two strong cable shows are also returning in early January for their winter seasons: USA Network's enduring detective comedy Monk and Sci Fi's blistering space adventure Battlestar Galactica.
And ABC jettisons its comedy lineup, probably not a moment too soon, with only Hope & Faith remaining, hammocked between the Dancing With the Stars results show and the new legal drama In Justice. Doubt any of that will make much of a dent in CBS's leadership on Fridays, for what that's worth.
Saturday
Who cares?
Sunday
Nothing much changes. ABC will still be the network to watch. And HBO won't get back into the game until the return of The Sopranos in March.
