Tag Archives: benched

NBC delays the return of ‘Community’ & ‘Whitney’

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Greendale Community College was supposed to open its doors for a Dan Harmon-less fourth season next Friday, October 19. Today NBC released a statement saying the network is delaying the return of Community and its Friday night companion Whitney.

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. 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.

Let’s extrapolate. First, NBC is prioritizing the promotion of its current fall comedies Go On, The New Normal, Animal Practice, and Guys with Kids. Second, they are acknowledging the possibility that some of their new comedies (namely Animal Practice and Guys with Kids) may not make it much longer. If one or both of these relatively low rated shows, Community and/or Whitney could ditch the Friday graveyard and call Wednesday night a comfortable home. Time will tell, fellow Human Beings.

[Via Deadline]

FOX pulls ‘Breaking In’ from the schedule, goodbye Contra Club

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After five weeks of being on the air, FOX is pulling the Christian Slater comedy Breaking In from their schedule. New Girl repeats will fill in the Tuesday night at 9PM time slot through May. FOX says that the remaining eight episodes of Breaking In will air “at a later date,” likely this summer.

So what happened? Poor ratings, obviously. After being cancelled last year, FOX decided to resurrect Breaking In and use it as a midseason player and squeeze it with their other quirky Tuesday night comedies New Girl and Raising Hope. The show’s most recent airing attracted a meager 2.6 million viewers and scored a low 1.3 rating in the coveted 18-49 adult demo. Simply put, the newfound workplace comedy didn’t spark interest and couldn’t hold onto the audiences who watch the two comedies that precede it on the night.

Having been a fan from the first season, I must admit that the revamp the show went under (namely, going from a break-in-of-the-week to a more typical workplace comedy) hurt the show creatively. Switching formats was risky and in the end didn’t help the show find the spark it desperately needed to flourish in the ratings. Though season one was a sleeper, it did strike a chord due to the fun and wacky dynamics of the characters, three of which departed the show for season two (Odette Annable’s hottie Melanie, Michael Rosenbaum’s douchey Dutch, and Trevor Moore’s master of disguise Josh). The addition of Megan Mullally and British hottie Erin Richards added a nice kick to the Contra Club, but ultimately their roles in the show diminished the influence so effortlessly executed by the hilarious Christian Slater. His character Oz dominated the first season. Once Mullally entered the picture and took over as Contra boss, Oz’s mystery and intrigue rapidly dissipated and he just became “one of the guys.”

And so in the end, even though the ratings decline might not have been affected by it, I believe that it was a poor decision to drastically change the dynamic of the show. The antics of Breaking In will be missed. As the old saying goes, we’ll always have season one.