Let's tell the truth about the Peacock: without The Voice, NBC is a barren wasteland of poor performing series, many of which can't inundate the fact that they are—or in some cases, once were—critical darlings. To point to the network's flagship Thursday night lineup is laughable, a painful barometer of then-verses-now: in the post-Friends era, The Office can hardly post above a 2.0 in the crucial 18-49 demographic in its final season. And that's the best performing series of the night.
The two core pillars (one certain, and the other a potential) of NBC's schedule are these: a booming The Voice, more important than ever as it continues to bring home Monday and Tuesday for the network, and surprise hit Revolution, whose demo numbers just don't seem to drop and assert that NBC is cable of successful series: it's just got to find them. But here's the bad news: both of those series are on hiatus until March, leaving troubling woes for the network as it tries to revive sinking shows and launch new ones. Four worries:
No Voice or Revolution until March.
Which you have to observe is actually practical, as Voice takes a few months off to save its ratings from viewer exhaustion. Plus, the insertion of Usher and Shakira while Cee-Lo and Christina Aguilera take a round off is smartly adding juice to the show's return. But what this also does is make the road much tougher for the series set to premiere in January, without a single decent lead-in on NBC's roster. The Voice and Revolution both return on March 25th.
New drama Deception (Janaury 7th) gets the Monday at 10pm slot.
In a series that's pretty much ABC's Revenge meets ABC's Scandal, Meagan Good leads a dark detective drama premiering January 7th where everyone's full of secrets, blah, blah, blah, you get it. But will America even find it? Monday at 10pm—until Revolution returns to finish off the season—didn't do Smash any favors at all last year, and Smash actually HAD the Voice lead-in. Deception only gets help from The Biggest Loser, who's demo average last year was a meager 2.2. It's certainly true that Revolution has found its own audience atop Hawaii Five-0 and Castle, but can Deception do the same without a solid base, other than Revolution residue?
Smash moves to Tuesdays at 10pm (premiering February 5th).
It's not hard to guess how NBC feels about Smash: it clearly just barely eked its way into a new season last year by the skin of its teeth, and the massive overhaul in the show's staffing and production does show that the network wants this to be the hit it actually does have the potential to be. But with their schedule being strained as is, one of the only spaces left in the roster is Tuesday at 10pm, where Smash will only be helped by the weak, but also gay-friendly, The New Normal. Really, the only way for Smash to survive is to pull a feat it couldn't manage last year: it's got to actually be good.
Community back (February 7th) on shaken-up Thursdays.
Post 30 Rock, it's not a surprise that Community has been restored to Thursdays—the baffling decision here is why it was ever moved to Fridays at all, even if it never saw that fate. So the new roster features Community at 8pm, Parks and Recreation up an hour to 8:30pm, The Office at 9pm, and new comedy 1600 Penn at 9:30pm. The post-post-post Thursday night comedy slot pretty much spells doom for a series that isn't that great anyway (we've seen it), and where it could have been used in an earlier spot to spark interest (8:30 was wide open here), NBC must not have thought it worthy.
What do you think? Does NBC have a chance to succeed without The Voice? Let us know in the comments.
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