I wanted to know your take on ...
Question: I wanted to know your take on NBC's scheduling changes after the Olympics. I personally think that NBC may be putting itself in a grave situation. First I need to talk about the moving of
Law & Order to Wednesdays, an hour earlier, at 9 pm/ET. This is a horrible time slot considering its competition. I have to give up
Law & Order because I already tape
Veronica Mars while I watch
Lost. Again
Scrubs was denied a Thursday time slot (post-
Earl when
The Office ends in March). And I feel that NBC is trying to annoy
Dick Wolf. First,
Trial by Jury was canceled, they move
Law & Order to Wednesdays at 9 pm/ET and now they are airing
Conviction Fridays at 10 pm/ET (the same slot as
Trial by Jury) when they should pair it with
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit since many
SVU fans are going to watch because of
Stephanie March reprising her role as Alexandra Cabot. Also,
Deal or No Deal and
The Apprentice are the lead-ins to the underappreciated
Medium. They should have kept
Las Vegas and
Law & Order in the same time slots and moved
The Apprentice to Fridays, moved
Scrubs to Thursdays after
Earl and aired
Conviction as a lead-in to
SVU.
Answer: Change usually involves risk, and change is almost always met with resistance, even temporary changes like these, and that's the case with the early mail in the wake of NBC's announced mid-season changes. (For my own analysis, check out my
Dispatch from earlier this week.) Personally, I think most of these moves (with the exception of leaving
Scrubs on Tuesday) are aggressive, provocative and logical. The
Law & Order move certainly raised the most eyebrows, but given that NBC has an empty hour on the night, better to use an established franchise like
Law & Order to lead an audience to the new
Heist than to strand a new mid-season drama against
Lost. (As I noted in my Dispatch,
Lost and
Law & Order couldn't be more dissimilar, and thus this makes for effective counterprogramming, though there's no doubt some viewers watch both.) I don't agree that
Conviction and
SVU should air back-to-back. I'm leery enough of yet another hour of Wolfian legal drama joining the schedule, but the least NBC can do is scatter them around the week. And I think NBC is right to go after CBS on Fridays with strong, commercial shows.
SVU played there successfully for years, so if
Conviction is up to snuff (as
Trial by Jury arguably wasn't), it may give
Numbers a run for its money.
Las Vegas is exactly the sort of escapist mind-candy programming that could work on Fridays, and potentially drive an audience to
Conviction, but if it doesn't pan out, I'd bet NBC will move
Vegas back to Mondays in the fall, depending on how
Apprentice does on its new night (and
Apprentice will likely make much more money for NBC on a weeknight than it would buried on Fridays, regardless of how many of us feel about this tired show). Bottom line: NBC needs to shake things up, and mid-season's the time to do it.
