Courtesy of: TV GUIDE, MATT ROUSH, DISPATCHES
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.
MondayThe 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.
TuesdayWhat 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.
WednesdayAnother 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 betweeni[]
E-Ring[/i] 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.
ThursdayIt'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.
FridayNBC'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.
SaturdayWho cares?
SundayNothing 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.
Edited by Dade, 05 December 2005 - 02:45 PM.
