Stupid major sporting events making things difficult for TV watchers.
Thanks to an impressive rally by the St. Louis Cardinals during game 6 of the 2011 World Series, pretty much everything scheduled for normal television viewing on this Friday night has been messed up. What exactly has been changed?
FOXObviously, the most dramatic changes are coming to FOX, the network having the pleasure of airing this unexpectedly exciting World Series. Thanks to a rain-out on Wednesday, game 6 got pushed to Thursday. With the Texas Rangers leading the series 3-2 going into that game, there was every chance in the world that Friday-night programming would not be affected.
Oh well.
The result of this, for FOX, is that the network's regularly scheduled programming of
Kitchen Nightmares at 8pm and
Fringe at 9pm will be preempted by the baseball. Viewers hoping for new episodes of these series will have to wait until next week, November 4, for the episodes originally scheduled for tonight.
CBSIt's hard to maintain your position as the number 1 network when a competitor has all the World Series fun going on. CBS, therefore, isn't even going to try to compete with FOX this Friday. All of the network's regularly-scheduled, new episodes have been pulled.
There were supposed to be new episodes for three Friday-night dramas on CBS:
A Gifted Man at 8pm,
CSI: New York at 9pm and
Blue Bloods at 10pm. The new World Series-influenced lineup gives us a repeat of the
Gifted Man pilot at 8pm, a
CSI: Miami repeat at 9pm ("Sudden Death") and a
CSI: New York repeat ("Smooth Criminal") at 10pm.
NBCObviously, bad things befall a network that dares to delay the return of
Chuck.
The spy comedy was originally set to begin season 5 last Friday, October 21. But then NBC decided to save
Chuck and its new companion,
Grimm, to air during the pre-Halloween week. Both shows are now set to air tonight, Friday, October 28 at 8pm (
Chuck) and 9pm (
Grimm).
Bad idea, NBC.
Is Chuck still awesome? Of course. Read our season 5 review to find out why!
Thanks to the previous delay of
Chuck and
Grimm, NBC has no plans to push those shows back even further. This is great news for anybody looking for something non-baseball to fill their evenings. It's not so great news for NBC -- or for
Chuck and
Grimm.
Major sporting events are always a ratings issue for the competition, and an unexpected game 7 of the World Series is going to be a major hit against NBC's Friday-night lineup.
We can only hope that NBC (and the advertisers) won't hold it against them.
Is Grimm worth the switch over from baseball? Click here for our review!The ResultsLife is good if you're a baseball fan. Otherwise, not so much.
(Images courtesy of NBC and FOX)